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...Treasury Secretary Geithner has told Congress that he would like to regulate Wall St. right down to the foundations of all of its buildings. That includes hedge funds, private equity firms, and traders of exotic financial instruments which may include credit default swaps and financial derivatives. Investment advisors like Mr. Madoff would also be watched more carefully by the government. In the Secretary's own words, "What we need is better, smarter, tougher regulation, because we've seen the costs of these weaknesses and gaps are catastrophic to the system as a whole." (See pictures of the global financial crisis...
...thanks to the climate crisis and a 30-year stretch without serious accidents in the U.S., no-nukes sentiment has faded; a Gallup poll this month found that 59% of Americans now support atomic power. The industry has an even broader base of bipartisan support in Congress, which continues to funnel it billions of dollars worth of loan guarantees, tax breaks, insurance benefits and direct subsidies; the latest goodie is "risk insurance," which will reimburse the industry for regulatory delays. States are devising even more creative incentives for new plants; Florida has promised to pay utilities for nuclear investments even...
...Baucus succeeds in navigating health-care reform through Congress, he may have another Montanan to thank for showing him how. Baucus' office suite in the Hart Senate Office Building is a veritable shrine to the longtime Senate Democratic leader Mike Mansfield, who guided the difficult passage of civil rights laws and Medicare in the 1960s. Mansfield counseled Baucus when the younger man started exploring a career in politics. Then a lawyer at the Securities and Exchange Commission, Baucus wasn't even sure whether he was a Democrat or a Republican. As Baucus planned his move back home to Montana...
...Whether that kind of argument will convince fiscal conservatives and deficit hawks in Congress remains to be seen. Obama's visit to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue came as the House and the Senate budget committees each introduced their own version of the bill, and less than a week after the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the 10-year shortfall would be $2.3 trillion greater than the White House's more rosy projections. Both chambers delivered on their recent promises to make sizable cuts to Obama's budget resolution, which is more of a blueprint for future spending than...
...some degree, Congress scaled back Obama's budget by resorting to the same kinds of accounting gimmicks the President had prided himself on avoiding, a fact Republicans were quick to point out. It dropped the long-term inclusion of the costly Alternative Minimum Tax fix - an annual must-pass bill to prevent the tax once intended for the superrich from hitting the middle class - and opted for a shorter time line of just five years vs. the 10-year budget the White House had crafted. "Given the state of the economy, everyone agrees that it's very difficult to predict...