Financial Reform NOW

The conference committee reconvenes this week to hammer out reconciliation between the Senate and House versions of the Financial Reform Bill.

Will the committee:

1. Include Senator Blanche Lincoln's provision to force banks to spin off their derivatives trading desks?

2. Enact the reform to cap the fees banks can charge retailers for each credit card transaction? Yeah, the companies earn serious money on that end too.

3. Include a ban on banks trading for themselves in the stock market?

4. Levy a tax on banks for the unwinding of failing institutions? My understanding is this tax would target the "too big to fail" institutions so prominent in the financial meltdown.

5. Create a consumer watchdog agency to protect borrowers from abusive lenders? One plan to assign this function to the Federal Reserve could well have the same effectiveness as placing regulation enforcement of drilling standards in the same agency that leased the wells to the oil companies - yeccht!

Needless to say, all the industry lobbyists are out in force, pressuring our legislators to remove any teeth from the bill.

Let's keep an eye on these guys.