This is welcome news, courtesy of MIT Professor Simon Johnson, a notice that Sen. Ted Kaufman (Delaware) is set to lay down a few tenets that underscore the nation's financial situation. And he's spot on.

1.  Excessive deregulation allowed big finance to get out of control from the 1980s -- but particularly during and after the 1990s. This led directly to the economic catastrophe in 2007-08.

2.  We need to modernize and apply the same general principles that were behind the Glass-Steagall, i.e., separating "boring" but essential commercial banking (running payments, offering deposits-with-insurance, etc) from "risky" other forms of financial activity

3.  We need size caps on the biggest banks in our financial system, preferably as a percent of GDP.

4.  We should tighten capital requirements substantially.

5. And we must regulate derivatives more tightly - on this issue, he likes at least some of the steps being pushed by Gary Gensler at the CFTC.