Oh my God, someone read the 2300-page financial regulatory bill, and provides some highlights! Which is good, because it passed the Senate, 60 to 38. (Yes, that's three Republicans, one Democrat naysayer, one non-voter and one dead Senator.) What's in it? I have made my peace with the fact that I will never know. Will you? Let me know!
This seems to me a strange account of what we saw yesterday at the Goldman Sachs hearings, particularly to run in the Times' Business section, the readers of which, presumably, have some familiarity with the fact that 1. yes, there were hearings and 2. they were weird hearings! And it seems so odd that they keep calling the testifying Goldman staff "officials," though I suppose it's technically accurate. (They are department heads in a corporation.) The Times wrote: "Steering away from financial jargon, the senators tried to put a human face on the questioning. Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada, declared that more transparency was needed 'so we don't [...]
Jeff Greene, the mega-rich housing market bust profiteer and friend of Heidi Fleiss and Mike Tyson… may actually become a Senator, as this delightful Washington Post profile reveals, because voters are crazy. He saved campaign money by buying his own eight-seater Gulfstream, for the bargain basement price of $23 million. On the plus side, he really hates Ron Howard, so he can't be all bad.
Health care reform vote in the Senate will take place in September. Or later. After they think about it, you know. Hope not too many of you DIE or anything meanwhile.
Do you not understand the Senate Financial Regulation Overhaul bill that passed yesterday? Have you been struggling to make sense of it in this morning's papers and blogs? We come with good tidings: don't bother! We now enter the long, boring process of reconciliation of the passed Senate bill with the House bill, that passed some six months ago now. There's a rather dull chart that highlights some of the major differences between the two, but you know what? You don't even have to worry about that. The mutated offspring that will emerge all bloody and feet-first will probably be a totally different kettle of fish. (… Sorry [...]
