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DI LEO: Little Barry Frames Some Friends By John F. Di Leo, Illinois Review, 4-20-2010 In the great 1964 Rat Pack musical “Robin and the Seven Hoods” – a comic portrayal of 1920s Chicago crime bosses – Maid Marian (Barbara Rush) asks Little John (Dean Martin), new in town, why on earth he joined up with the smalltime Robbo (Frank Sinatra) when he could have joined up with the much more powerful Guy Gisborne (Peter Falk). Dino just blew in from Indiana, didn’t know anybody in town, and picked the weaker side, on purpose, with eyes open. Why on earth...

When you type “Goldman Sachs SEC” into Google, the results include an ad for Wall Street reform, paid for by the Democratic National Committee. . . (Snip) (DNC Communications Director Brad)Woodhouse said the ad is part of an online campaign that began about two weeks ago , and has included such Google search terms as “Goldman,” “Wall Street” and “Bank of America. . ."

Expect more friendly crowds cheering whatever he says. Expect more long winded "answers" that don't come close to addressing the actual questions asked by everyday Americans. Expect complete avoidance of any tough questioning from the press. President Barack Obama is going back on the road to pitch another one of his "remake America" policies.

All 41 Republican senators have signed a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid saying they are opposed to the financial regulation bill put forward by Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd .... The letter calls for further negotiations, but it does not go as far as to say all 41 senators would support a filibuster of the legislation. *snip* The GOP's contention that the reforms amount to a "bailout bill" seem to follow the advice of a GOP pollster and focused on a provision in the legislation to create a $50 billion bank liquidation fund. The charge was sharply rebuked by...

RUSH: That's right. There will not be any more bailouts, the government will just have the power to put companies out of business, seize their assets, break them up, fire employees. And he's upset because they're saying it's a bailout bill? This is so convoluted. This piece of legislation is as filled with fraud and deception as was the health care bill. The real purpose of this is nothing to do with making sure we don't have another economic collapse, it's nothing to do with ensuring that there aren't business cycles because nobody can do that. There's no way you...

Republican Senate leaders laid out a strategy Tuesday to alter or even reject broad changes in financial regulations. They said Democratic proposals would perpetuate bank bailouts, and they accused the Obama administration of exploiting anti-Wall Street sentiment for political purposes. The criticism was an opening salvo as the Senate prepares to take up a sweeping overhaul of the nation's financial regulatory regimen in less than two weeks. President Barack Obama planned to make his case for regulatory changes in a meeting Wednesday at the White House with congressional leaders from both parties. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, in a floor...

If mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the proverbial 800-pound gorillas in the room, Congress appears to be ignoring them. Neither the financial regulatory reform bill passed last year by the House nor the one introduced by Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., in the Senate Banking Committee resolve the future of the government-sponsored enterprises that played a key role in the financial meltdown. Without Fannie Mae(FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) "the panic would have been much less severe, if it had happened at all," said Richard Vigilante, communications director for Whitebox Advisors, an investment advisory firm.

For over a year, the Federal Reserve has been pouring money into American mortgages. Buying "mortgage-backed securities" (MBS), financial instruments whose value is based on a pool of underlying mortgages. When the financial crisis broke, the market for MBS dried up. Buyers feared that homeowners would default on their mortgages. Driving the value of these assets to almost nothing, or worse. Financial institutions in America and around the world were left holding trillions of dollars worth of non-saleable MBS. It appeared these holders would be forced to mark down the value of their MBS holdings, potentially triggering another wave of...

The 1,334-page financial markets bill now pending in the Senate would implement a vast array of changes in the way banks and other financial institutions are regulated. Issues range from how best to protect consumers to how to liquidate failing firms to what rules to apply to complex financial instruments. These issues tend to be as complex as they are critical to the future of the U.S. economy. The good news is that there is a wealth of expert analysis on the key issues. Here are 16 of the best. Consumer Protection The Senate bill would create a new financial...

Barney Frank: Financial reform on wayBill to require firms to keep stake in risky investments, derivatives By Thomas Grillo Friday, April 2, 2010 On the heels of a major overhaul of the health-care system, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank predicted that financial reform legislation would reach the president’s desk by Memorial Day with a lot less rancor. “This is not health care,” Frank (D-Newton) told business leaders at a Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce event yesterday. “The public is overwhelmingly on the side of reform.” A major element of the legislation will require a 5 percent “risk retention” for any securities...

In fact, the power elite's planned consolidations are under attack around the world. Europe is beginning to simmer, and even boil in such places as Greece. In America, the Tea Party movement is growing in size and scope and will not ultimately be contained by the Republican party. In South America a series of leftist oriented governments are far less apt to do the West's bidding than such governments once were. Japan and especially China are still perhaps in the West's orbits but are apt to go their own way not because of the political class but because the citizens...

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats, with the backing of the Obama administration, took a big step forward on Monday toward adopting the most sweeping overhaul of financial regulations since the Depression, calling on Republicans to join them to adopt the measure in the thick of an election year. Exactly 18 months since Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, setting in motion a financial crisis that required a federal bailout of unprecedented scope, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee laid out a bill that aims to ensure stability for the financial system; close regulatory loopholes that had allowed excessive risk-taking; and protect...

Stock Market Heading For Black Monday Crash? Stock-Markets / Financial Crash Jan 24, 2010 - 12:26 PM By: Clive Maund On Friday Goldman Sachs and J P Morgan broke down decisively from their Head-and-Shoulders tops, a development that we predicted before the open based in large part on the huge downside volume in these stocks on Thursday. The Put options that we bought in the early trade in GS and JPM soared, some contracts rising by about 50% by the close. This bearish development caused shockwaves to spread through the market which accelerated to the downside late in the day....

Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) -- As many as 50 financial firms with assets greater than $50 billion each would be hit by a levy President Barack Obama will propose today to help recoup taxpayer bailout money and trim the federal budget deficit, an administration official said. The levy based on bank liabilities would be imposed starting June 30 and the administration estimates it will raise $90 billion over a minimum of 10 years, said the official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity. Obama plans to outline the proposal late this morning at the White House and a more detailed...

Last week the U.S. House of Representatives passed Barney Frank’s financial regulatory reform bill, or as Democratic Congressman Brad Sherman called it, “TARP on Steroids.” Instead of examining and addressing the root cause of the financial collapse so that we may ensure it never happens again, this bill codifies the bailout mindset.

WASHINGTON - The House passed the most ambitious restructuring of federal financial regulations since the New Deal on Friday, aiming to head off any replay of last year's Wall Street failures that plunged the nation deep into recession. The sprawling legislation would give the government new powers to break up companies that threaten the economy, create a new agency to oversee consumer banking transactions and shine a light into shadow financial markets that have escaped the oversight of regulators. The vote was a party-line 223-202. No Republicans voted for the bill; 27 Democrats voted against it. While a victory for...

The House has passed a sweeping overhaul of financial regulations that would govern Wall Street and reconfigure the power of the agencies overseeing the nation's banking system. The vote was 223-202. The legislation is a priority of President Barack Obama's. It is designed to address the shortfalls that led to last year's calamitous financial meltdown. New powers would give the federal government the right to break up big risky companies. It also would create a consumer agency to police lenders.

Congressional Democrats are poised to pass legislation before the end of this year that would increase the federal borrowing limit by another $1.8 trillion, a number large enough to avoid revisiting the matter next year when Democrats will have to defend their majority in midterm elections. To make sure the legislation passes, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is planning on combining it with a bill that funds Iraq and Afghanistan. Do you think Congress should raise the debt ceiling higher than its current $12.1 trillion?

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Wednesday moved to extend the government's $700 billion bailout fund into October 2010 and pledged to deploy no more than $550 billion of it. Geithner, in letters to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, said the extension of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) until Oct 3, 2010, would allow the Obama administration to use bailout funds to fight home foreclosures and boost small business lending.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave her strongest endorsement yet of a global financial transaction fee Thursday after raising the issue directly with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in a conversation this week. Geithner was widely seen as opposing such a levy when it was proposed by Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, at a meeting of G-20 finance ministers last month in Scotland. But after their phone conversation Wednesday, Pelosi told colleagues that the secretary indicated he was more open to some such fee than had been reported. Pelosi didn’t reveal her conversation with Geithner at her weekly press conference Thursday, but...