THe Senate Agriculture Committee passed legislation which has NECESSARY tougher regulation of derivatives (read Credit Default Swaps) than either of the other bills passed by Senate Banking committee or the House Financial Services committee.
that's why Wall Street was putting on an all out assault on the Senate Agriculture committee.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/business/20derivatives.html?src=twt&twt=nytimesbusinessAssessing the battle to overhaul the nation’s financial regulations recently, Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, left no doubt about the consequences if Congress cracked down on his bank’s immense business in derivatives.
With so much money at stake, it is not surprising that more than 1,500 lobbyists, executives, bankers and others have made their way to the Senate committee that on Wednesday will take up legislation to rein in derivatives, the complex securities at the heart of the financial crisis, the billion-dollar bank bailouts and the fraud case filed last week against Goldman Sachs.
The forum for all this attention is not the usual banking and financial services committees, but rather the Senate Agriculture Committee, a group more accustomed to dealing with farm subsidies and national forest boundaries than with the more obscure corners of Wall Street.
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Much of that lobbying has centered on Senator Blanche Lincoln, the Arkansas Democrat who is the committee’s chairwoman and who last week introduced the bill that would prevent banks from trading derivatives directly.
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