Let the battles begin.

Now that President Barack Obama has unveiled his sweeping proposal to remake financial regulation in the U.S., attorneys and lobbyists for nearly every facet of the financial-services industry are poring over it, determining where to fold, where to compromise -- and where to fight tooth and nail.

They've got plenty to choose from. In his brief White House address -- which was accompanied by a detailed 85-page white paper outlining the changes he would make -- the President made clear the ambitious scope of his agenda. "That's our goal -- to restore markets in which we reward hard work and responsibility and innovation, not recklessness and greed; in which honest, vigorous competition in the system is prized, and those who game the system are thwarted," Obama said on June 17 to an East Room crowd of dozens of top regulators and congressional leaders, along with representatives from business, labor, and consumer groups. "With the reforms we're proposing today, we seek to put in place rules that will allow our markets to promote innovation while discouraging abuse."

Business's Concerns Sounds good in theory, and few would disagree with those aims. In fact, few did. Financial-services representatives and other business groups were quick to laud the broad ideas the President laid out, even as they lambasted the details they didn't like.

"While the Administration has made several positive recommendations, we're concerned that overall the proposal simply adds to the layering of the system without addressing the underlying and fundamental problems," said David Hirschmann, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Center for Capital Markets. "We can't simply insert new regulatory agencies and hope that we've covered our bases."

No surprise there: Should the Administration succeed in pushing its plans through Congress, profits and growth could be significantly diminished throughout much of the financial sector, as could financing for other industries.

The debate now moves to Capitol Hill, where it is likely to continue through yearend, if not longer. Of course, as trade groups and lobbyists target elements large and small, they won't be working in a vacuum. Public anger over the financial crisis and bailouts, along with a Congress that largely shares the Administration's goals, leave them facing an uphill struggle in many cases. Consumer advocates and other groups are also gearing up for the fight: On June 16, some 200 organizations that support most of Obama's financial agenda threw their collective weight into a newly created organization, Americans for Financial Reform.

"Business had it the way they wanted it for a very long time -- little or no regulation, the ability to offer a lot of funny-money products that didn't necessarily help consumers but made the companies a lot of money," says John Taylor, chief executive of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, which advocates for lower-income households. "Now let's try it the way the rest of the world does it -- you actually have a free market and consumer protections that bring the rule of law into the marketplace."

"Season of Regulation" With so many interests -- and so much money -- at stake, the fight will be neither short nor sweet. Longtime Democratic political strategist Bob Shrum, now a senior fellow at New York University's Wagner School of Public Service, predicts a three- to five-year "season of regulation" for financial firms similar to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's push for workplace and securities-market reforms from 1935 to 1938. While any delay in the enactment of Obama's proposals probably falls in the favor of business, Shrum warns that financial companies could pay a price if they simply try to stonewall.

"Business has a lot of capacity to influence this as the process will move along -- already has influenced it, and will influence it more in Congress," Shrum told a gathering of financial-company representatives Wednesday morning. "In this environment, I think the risk of not being at the table is very high."

So which issues are likely to be the most contentious? Here are four:

CONSUMER PROTECTION

Perhaps the boldest stroke is the Administration's call for a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency. The new entity would take over the regulation of credit, debit, and gift cards and mortgages, as well as such things as the oversight of overdraft protection on bank accounts. The goal: to improve and simplify disclosure so that consumers don't end up trapped in products with high prices or hidden fees they didn't properly understand.