The House of Representatives, in some cases on a bipartisan basis, is generally getting at the issue of JPMorgan Chase’s multi-billion dollar losses in today’s Financial Services Committee hearing with CEO Jamie Dimon. Clearly, Dimon is miffed by even having to be present for this questioning, an emotion he mostly didn’t have to show before [...]

Here we go. The bipartisan PR campaign to extend our military presence in Iraq has begun at the legislative level. Military officials already were making loaded statements about how Iraq would have to inform them soon if they wanted the troops to stay. This never materialized, so I guess you could see this as Plan [...]

After the first week of the conference committee for Wall Street reform, I would call the verdict middling. Reformers have won some victories – all hedge funds and private equity firms will have to register with the SEC, credit rating agencies will be on the hook for standard liability for negligence, the Fed audit is [...]

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; [...]