Despite the talk from Washington, D.C., about crafting tough financial reforms, there are fears from across the political spectrum that the reforms that will emerge from Congress will not be tough enough to deter the riskiest Wall Street behavior or effective enough to prevent another financial crisis.

Before trying to understand if proposed reforms go far enough, it's worth remembering that the financial industry has donated about $30 million to political campaigns in just the 2010 election cycle. Going back to 1990, the financial industry has given about $1 billion to Washington politicians, including leading senators from both parties and President Barack Obama.

Some important issues are being addressed, such as forcing derivatives, the highly complex financial bets that are now unregulated, to be traded on exchanges, which would increase transparency into these financial instruments that are so profitable for Wall Street.

That's a start, but many experts argue it does not go far enough. Some have suggested that some of the most extreme derivatives — once called "financial weapons of mass destruction" by legendary investor Warren Buffett — should simply be banned. These are the transactions that are nothing more than high-stakes bets. These so-called investments are not investments in terms of adding anything to the economy or creating jobs by helping a company expand. Derivatives are a prime example of the casino side of Wall Street that helped spark the global financial crisis.

Another issue that Washington seems unwilling to address is a solution to the "too-big-to-fail" theory that forced the federal government to bail out many of the biggest banks. As most people know, the banks that were too-big-to-fail then are now bigger, due to absorbing some of their more-distressed competitors.

When the casino aspect of Wall Street and the too-big-to-fail theory are looked at together, it points to another reform proposal backed by some experts, but rejected by most in Washington — bringing back the Glass Steagall Act, the Depression- era law that separated investment banking from commercial banking. Many people are troubled that the same federally backed institutions that take deposits and make loans are also making risky bets on complex financial instruments.

Real reform would update Glass Steagall and separate the casino culture of investment banks from the traditional banking business.

This idea is part of what's been called the Volcker Rule, a package of strict reform ideas from former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. Volcker's ideas get lip service from some in Washington, but they do not appear to be in the reform package now taking shape.

Another area of reform focuses on leverage and reserve requirements. In the period leading up to the crisis, banks were wagering $40 for every $1 they held. Strict leverage limits and a requirement to hold larger reserves could lessen the likelihood of another financial crisis by discouraging excessive risk-taking and forcing banks to have more of their own money at risk.

Most people did not realize, until after the financial crisis, that the major rating agencies, such as Moody's and Standard & Poor's, are paid by the big banks to examine and then rate the risk of investments pushed by these very same banks. Evidence has emerged that the rating agencies were influenced by the big banks to give risky investments a safer rating than they deserved.

Rating agencies must be truly independent if investors are to have any confidence that Wall Street is not a rigged game.

Finally, the public should be wary about suggestions that tougher regulations and more regulators will prevent another crisis.

It's well-known that existing regulators, including those at the Securities and Exchange Commission, have been asleep at the switch. For example, Harry Markopolos, the whistle blower in the Bernard Madoff scandal, told the SEC that Madoff was a fraud. He twice presented detailed explanations of Madoff's scam. Yet the SEC didn't take him seriously.

Last week, in testimony before the financial crisis inquiry board, it was learned that two separate regulatory agencies were ineffective in preventing Washington Mutual from becoming the largest bank failure in history. Two agencies reportedly feuded over the bank and failed to take action because they believed bank officials who told them the problems were being addressed.

Federal regulators often are outgunned and outsmarted by those they regulate. The million-dollar bonuses available on Wall Street generally attract more powerful, money-motivated intellects than federal regulatory agencies.

There is little doubt that with billions of dollars of profit and multimillion-dollar bonuses, Wall Street will find loopholes in any regulations developed today. The financial industry might even be using its clout to create loopholes for whatever package of reforms is passed by Congress, so that they can be exploited later.

Financial reform that relies mostly on improved regulations and more regulators will be a recipe for disaster — and will prove Wall Street won the battle to defeat real reform. Structural reforms must be approved to reduce the reliance on regulators to prevent another crisis and future bailouts.

Any financial reform bill should be viewed with some skepticism, given the money at stake, the history of campaign contributions flowing from Wall Street to Washington as well as the revolving door that has people moving from Wall Street to Washington and back again.