President Obama signs national financial reform act

President Barack Obama today signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, a bill meant to protect consumers and aid economic stability.

The law gives the government the power to break up companies threatening the economy and creates a new customer financial guarding agency, according to the Associated Press.

It also, however, has other effects.

According to a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. news release, the law permanently raises the standard maximum deposit insurance amount to $250,000; while the amount was already set at that figure in October 2008, it was only a temporary raise of its usual amount of $100,000 until December 2013.

FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair said the new law should help to ease worry.

"With this permanent increase of deposit insurance coverage to $250,000, depositors with CDs above $100,000 but below $250,000 will no longer have to worry about losing coverage on those CDs maturing beyond 2013," she said in the release.

In the release, she encouraged bank depositors with questions about their insurance coverage to visit the FDIC Web site.
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