My Comments: For the past 3 and 1/2 years, I’ve been listening to negatives from the right. Some of them have been justified. But many of them simply appeal to the inability of voters to understand the most basic facts of life.

For example, after about 40 years as a financial advisor and insurance agent, I’ve developed a rather cynical attitude about what motivates companies in financial services. If you believe what they promote and do is in your best interest, I have some really nice property just east of St. Augustine that I can sell you for a reasonable price. CALL ME!

Wall Street plays an important role in the continued economic health of this country. But left alone with no oversight, you can bet your last dollar their actions are in their best interest and not yours. You have to ask yourself whether Mr. Romney and Company is more interested in your welfare or more interested in the financial health of the folks on Wall Street.

(Bloomberg News) Mitt Romney has pledged to repeal the Dodd-Frank Act. He won’t, and that’s just fine with Wall Street.

Instead, Romney may give the financial industry something it wants more: a revamped Dodd-Frank that would accommodate some of the most profitable and riskiest activities while preserving a patina of protection for investors and consumers.

“There’s this perception that banks hate everything in Dodd-Frank, and that’s just not true,” said Mark Calabria, a former top Republican aide on the Senate Banking Committee. “From a bank’s perspective, you’d rather have piecemeal reform of Dodd-Frank, not only because there are things in the law you want to keep, but also because you’re going to have more control over the process.”

Congressional Republicans have already laid out the roadmap.

“With Dodd-Frank, it’s not going to be repeal,” said Representative Scott Garrett, a senior Republican member of the House Financial Services Committee. “There might be repeals of sections, but there will be a piece-by-piece analysis. We’ll throw out some and reform others.”

U.S. bank executives have made no secret of their dislike of parts of President Barack Obama’s 2010 financial-regulatory overhaul. Yet those same bankers, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Lloyd Blankfein and JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Jamie Dimon pledged broad support for the law, leaving their lobbyists and lawyers to fight behind the scenes for revisions that may save millions, if not billions, of dollars for their companies.

‘Too Far’

“If I could push a button and eliminate Dodd-Frank would I do it? No, I would not,” Blankfein, the chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs, said in a July appearance before the Economic Club of Washington. Still, he said, there are “some parts that go too far.”

The sentiments of CEOs such as Blankfein and the political realities of Washington mean that Romney would have an easier path winning revisions than repeal.

The architecture that Wall Street wants has emerged in House and Senate hearings and proposed bills over the past two years. It includes loosening rules governing the swaps market, an area where U.S. banks reported $7 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2012, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Restrictions on bank investment in private equity and hedge funds, as well as their ability to trade for their own account, also have been targeted.

Change That Matters

For banks spending billions of dollars to comply with the rules dictated by the 2,300-page law — and millions on lobbying to alter it — these are the changes that really matter.