Derivatives won’t officially come up in the Wall Street reform conference committee until next week. But we’re already seeing a lot of behind-the-scenes work. Blanche Lincoln, that tireless slayer of Wall Street dragons, has already softened her Section 716 reform to spin-off the lucrative swaps trading desk. Not everyone is totally worried by these changes; [...]

I wrote yesterday that Blanche Lincoln was “considering” some new language to her derivatives title, including a two-year ramp-up period and a “study” put together by the banking lobby monitoring the effect of spinning off the swap trading desks. I was a little concerned about the study, but the spin-off to subsidiaries would have to [...]

Despite earlier reports of a new day for the embattled Section 716 provision of the Wall Street reform bill, which would force mega-banks to spin off their swaps trading operations, a compromise appears in the works, which would admittedly be preferable to an outright elimination. Senator Blanche Lincoln is considering compromise language to her derivatives [...]

I alluded to this in my conference committee post, but the Wall Street Journal has more about the intra-Democratic fight over derivatives rules, with Collin Peterson the designated villain: House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D., Minn.) said lawmakers should adopt the House bill, while Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Blanche Lincoln (D., Ark.) and other [...]

I’ve been somewhat silent about the kickoff of yesterday’s conference committee on Wall Street reform. That’s because I really don’t think the committee per se matters. I’m happy that it’s being televised and will have some measure of transparency; I’m happy that we know pretty much how it will work (h/t to Kagro X and [...]

Nobody could have anticipated: The pro-business organization Americans for Job Security played an influential role in helping Lincoln beat her challenger, Bill Halter, by running a controversial ad campaign in which Indian actors thanked the Lt. Governor for outsourcing American jobs to their country. The spots were effective (Lincoln echoed the message in mailers of [...]

I hadn’t commented on the “pointless exercise” comments coming from some anonymous, cowardly sore winners at the White House after Blanche Lincoln’s runoff election victory, and the resultant pushback from labor. It seemed to me a dick-swinging comment by elites that wasn’t likely to look good after Lincoln got torched in November. In fact, if [...]

Conventional wisdom amuses me in the way that watching a child’s soccer game amuses me. Before the Tuesday election, not one pundit could probably explain to you the nature of Blanche Lincoln’s derivatives title for the Wall Street reform bill. Now they’re all convinced that her election will ensure its inclusion in the final package. [...]

So we all piled into the hotel bar last night and turned on our PDAs and laptops and basically did what we do at home. This despite not seeing one another generally. And it was loud and chaotic and I’m working on a few hours sleep. So I don’t have a whole lot to say [...]

I’m here on the ground at the America’s Future Now conference at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in DC, and just got up on the Internet. In front of a moderate-sized, Monday-morning-sleepy crowd, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future Robert Borosage called for an independent progressive movement, separate and apart from the White House, organizing [...]

Bill Halter has maintained a narrow lead over Blanche Lincoln in the R2K/Daily Kos poll, shockingly one of the only pollsters surveying the runoff election. I find it puzzling that almost nobody polled this race leading up to the primary election, and nobody’s wading into it now. It’s a tough race to poll, because there [...]