In this issue: Arbitration Report; Beltway Report; Mortgage Report; Operations Report; Plastic Report; Preemption Report; Privacy Report; and MoFo Metrics.

Call us “Hobbits” if you will, Senator McCain, but expect more Dodd-Frank mirth. July 21, 2011, marked the first birthday and look how it’s grown! We can hardly wait for Dodd-Frank to stop burping up formula, start crawling around, knocking things over, and screaming, “Mine!” Can we child-proof the banks?

Speaking of which, there is nothing funny about Basel III (we wish), unless your interests tend toward fingernails on chalkboard. As we report here, a lot has happened on the banks of the Rhine since we last met. We also report on Dodd-Frank, hostilities over debit interchange and mortgage loan-mods, privacy, and those wacky post-Concepcion decisions that are bulldozing aside the remaining obstacles to consumer arbitration—that, and much more.

Until next time, we’ll leave our closing remarks to Texas Governor Rick Perry, who in June 2005 was overheard saying at the close of an interview while the broadcast feed was still live: “Adios, mofo.”