By Jesse Eisinger, ProPublica

This was co-published with The Washington Post.

President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank financial reform law in July 2010, hailing it as an overhaul to prevent the kind of crisis that hit the world economy in 2008 and one of the signature achievements of his first term. Almost three years later, much of the big stuff the law calls for is on hold, under legal and legislative assault, or still working its way through the regulatory intestines. According to a law firm that tracks the legislation, only 38 percent of the 398 Dodd-Frank rules have been imposed, while regulators haven't yet publicly put forward versions of almost a third of them.

Is this the face of success? A new book, "Act of Congress," by Robert Kaiser, an associate editor and senior correspondent for The Washington Post, gives that question a qualified yes. "The story of Dodd-Frank does demonstrate that Congress still can work," he writes, "and it shows how, but only in extreme circumstances."

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"A crucial change in the way financial derivatives are packaged and sold on Wall Street is enabling traders to bypass new regulations aimed at limiting reckless speculation, enhancing the prospect of another derivatives crisis, warn some market participants."

The Dodd-Frank financial reform law came into effect in 2010 in response to the financial crisis- it required safeguards for investors to cover losses on their derivatives trades. But what if investors found another, risky, way around that? That's what's happening now. Is it time to start the financial Armageddon clock? Cenk Uygur breaks it down.

Due out on newstands January 17th, Matt Taibbi's latest expose on the Big Banks, Big Government, and Wall Street is available online now. As always, it's another "Must Read" if you haven't yet done so. Here's a snippet...

Matt Taibbi:

It has been four long winters since the federal government, in the hulking, shaven-skulled, Alien Nation-esque form of then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, committed $700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue Wall Street from its own chicanery and greed. To listen to the bankers and their allies in Washington tell it, you'd think the bailout was the best thing to hit the American economy since the invention of the assembly line. Not only did it prevent another Great Depression, we've been told, but the money has all been paid back, and the government even made a profit. No harm, no foul – right?

Wrong.

It was all a lie – one of the biggest and most elaborate falsehoods ever sold to the American people. We were told that the taxpayer was stepping in – only temporarily, mind you – to prop up the economy and save the world from financial catastrophe. What we actually ended up doing was the exact opposite: committing American taxpayers to permanent, blind support of an ungovernable, unregulatable, hyperconcentrated new financial system that exacerbates the greed and inequality that caused the crash, and forces Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to increase risk rather than reduce it. The result is one of those deals where one wrong decision early on blossoms into a lush nightmare of unintended consequences. We thought we were just letting a friend crash at the house for a few days; we ended up with a family of hillbillies who moved in forever, sleeping nine to a bed and building a meth lab on the front lawn.

How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform

But the most appalling part is the lying. The public has been lied to so shamelessly and so often in the course of the past four years that the failure to tell the truth to the general populace has become a kind of baked-in, official feature of the financial rescue. Money wasn't the only thing the government gave Wall Street – it also conferred the right to hide the truth from the rest of us. And it was all done in the name of helping regular people and creating jobs. "It is," says former bailout Inspector General Neil Barofsky, "the ultimate bait-and-switch."

The bailout deceptions came early, late and in between. There were lies told in the first moments of their inception, and others still being told four years later. The lies, in fact, were the most important mechanisms of the bailout. The only reason investors haven't run screaming from an obviously corrupt financial marketplace is because the government has gone to such extraordinary lengths to sell the narrative that the problems of 2008 have been fixed. Investors may not actually believe the lie, but they are impressed by how totally committed the government has been, from the very beginning, to selling it.

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Burn Wall Street is a large scale, outdoor art installation that is sprouting powerful conversations countrywide. By bringing individuals from the Occupy and Tea Party movements together, this project asks participants to put their political identities aside in order to talk about common principles and goals for financial reform.

Forged from the financial unrest and injustice that has incensed the American public, Burn Wall Street’s core intention is built on participation, one of the Ten Principles of Burning Man. The art project is being prefabricated in Reno, Nevada, following an initial phase that began in Oakland, California.

Oakland-based artist Otto Von Danger, a performance artist who gained notoriety for blowing up a city facade at the festival two years ago, spent two months and an estimated $100,000 constructing the massive Wall Street model, which consisted of five interactive buildings and a replica of Zuccotti Park, SF Weekly reports.

Burn Wall Street was installed as an honorarium art piece at Burning Man 2012 in the Black Rock Desert, and was sponsored by Veterans for Peace, a 501c3 non-profit.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has been one of the most outspoken critics of the Volcker Rule, a section of the Dodd-Frank Act that aims to keep the banks in which you deposit your money from gambling it on their own sometimes-risky investments. Now Dimon has announced that risky trades have cost his company $2 billion in losses. In this April 22, 2012 Moyers Moment from Moyers & Company, Paul Volcker himself responds to Jamie Dimon’s complaints about the rule and its effects.