As the fallout from the financial crisis continues, blame for who was at fault has continued to be levied on political adversaries by each side. At the end of the debate the facts remain that most of the regulatory structure for the financial industry dates back to post Depression era. On top of that, some major regulatory rules were rolled back during the Clinton administration under the oversight of a Republican led congress. This has happened while the complexity of financial instruments has grown exponentially. It has also been said that many in the regulatory community saw the coming financial tsunami but lacked the regulatory authority to do anything about it. It is true that many of the banking instruments that have gone bad were the invention of Wall Street and not the traditional banks. Much of Wall Street's operations were outside of current regulatory authority.

In the wake of this disaster, US lawmakers passed the most sweeping restructuring of regulation on financial institutions since the Great Depression. The new regulations includes a roll back of leverage allowed by banks, fees levied on institutions that are considered too big to fail, and an audit of the Federal Reserve. They also included more leverage for share holders of publically traded companies to limit the pay of top executives. Smaller banks and corporations are currently exempt from much of the new regulations.