It's basically a travesty that adds a lot of systems and regulators without actually fixing or even touching any of the fundamental problems that gave rise to the crisis in the first place. But other than just adding more friction and cost to transactions marginally across the board, I don't know that it does massive damage to the system either, unlike the health care bill or most of Obama's other travesties so far.
It goes further than that. Remember, up here in the Northeast and other cold-weather states, a lot of people depend on "pre-buy" for their winter heating oil or propane. If you don't have the ability to purchase that fuel based on derivatives, you're now forcing your customers to limit how much they can buy at a particular time, or basically turn everyone into "cash" customers, who will in many cases pay more as the winter goes on and stocks dwindle.
Or worse, you'll have people like one distributor in Exeter who simply take the money and run when they realize they can't possibly fulfill their contracts without taking a major loss.
