Capitulation: 2 Already Weak Bills + Lobbyists = Weaker Bill

Today in DC: House Financial Services Committee Chair, Barney Frank whose financial 'reform' bill would have created a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency as an independent body, agreed to have it housed within the Fed as per Senate Banking Chair, Chris Dodd's bill instead. Aside from the ridiculousness of giving the Fed any extra influence over anything, and fact that the CFPA is already losing against bank lobbyists pre-inception, this shows that in the battle of weak bank regulations, the weakest always wins.

AIG quietly off the hook

Without much media fan-fare, the SEC closed its investigation of AIG and its execs this week, following the same move by the Department of Justice last month. $182 billion of our money, a show investigation and no charges later, and everything is back to normal like nothing ever happened. Change you can believe in?

Palin: Posturing Like a Banker?

Like many other journalists, or actually all of them, I don't know why Sarah Palin chose to announce her resignation as Alaska's governor on a slow news weekend, except the desire to draw less attention to it. It certainly reeks of miscalculated political maneuvering - that whole maverick thing - which ultimately fails in the Washington establishment. Though, it might play well with existing Palin-converts.

But, I do know that many powerful men have resigned from one post in order to jump to another one offering more power, money, or both. President Clinton's former Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, left his public position to 'pursue other interests', which turned out to be code for 'a high-level spot at Citigroup.' There, he made $126 million over an eight-year period. True, Citigroup recently almost imploded and he resigned from the firm earlier this year. But before these pitfalls, he did okay for himself, if not the rest of us. 

President Bush's Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson left his extremely lucrative job running Goldman Sachs to swing over into public office, where he proceeded to initiate the largest bank bailout in US history. And, former co-President of Goldman Sachs, John Thain, left that position to run the New York Stock Exchange, which he took public, bagging millions of dollars for all its major shareholders. From there, he leapt to the helm of Merrill Lynch in late 2007, netting the highest bonus for a Wall Street CEO that year. Things haven't worked out so well for him lately, but his bank account would still make yours cry.

As for Palin - she didn't just jump. She stated that her resignation was really the best thing for Alaska. But, even fabricated humility is a banker ploy. Last fall, JPM Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon, went out of his way to make sure we all knew that his bank did not need TARP money. He was only taking it for the team - so that all of the banks who truly needed the capital wouldn't look as bad. The fact that his firm received all sorts of other federal perks not withstanding.

All that said, these men did demonstrate more advantageous timing and a clearer strategy. Palin's timing, if there is a wider goal, leaves much more to be desired. But, whether Palin runs for President in 2012 (which is likely, certainly doesn't mean she'll win) or whether she just doesn't feel like running Alaska anymore - the move to move on has precedent regardless of whether the outcome is positive or negative for the nation. So either way, there's going to be more Palin pontification in our future.