Banking/Financial Institutions

Rep. Dave Loebsack (D-Iowa) has urged SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro to use the Goldman Sachs settlement to reimburse Cedar Rapids and Linn County, which he claims were defrauded by the investment house. 

The Financial Services chairman is leaning on Obama to nominate Warren as head of the new bureau.

After a lengthy debate Thursday, the Senate voted 60-37 to end debate on an amendment for community bank lending.

Sen. George LeMieux (R-Fla.) reiterated his support for the $30 billion small business lending fund under consideration in the Senate.

"I believe it will help and that's why I support it," he said Thursday night on the floor. 

LeMieux said the bill isn't about large Wall Street firms but instead about local banks lending to small businesses. 

"This won't increase the deficit and it will return more than $1 billion to the Treasury over time," LeMieux said. "It's not a deficit it's a surplus."

With an unemployment rate of 11.4 percent, Florida is in need of a bill that can help create jobs, he said. 

"The bill doesn't create big government, it puts the money in the hands of community bankers to lend to small business, the folks that create jobs," he said. 

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) blasted her Republican colleagues over their opposition to a $30 billion small-business lending fund. 

The fund, which has the broad support of community bankers, has been called a bailout by those who don’t support the proposal. 

“This is for community banks,” she said Thursday. “Because they want a bumper sticker to run on in this election they’re going to throw small businesses under the bus … over my dead body. “

Landrieu insisted that the lending funding isn’t a government program and that instead it’s an avenue to get money to Main Street. 

“I feel like I’m in Alice in Wonderland,” she said. 

The $30 billion fund could be leveraged to provide as much as $300 billion of credit, according to the Independent Community Bankers Association.

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Treasury secretary says regulatory overhaul bill became law because "Republicans decided they could not block it."

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Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) dismissed on Thursday as a “distraction” reports that he might face a challenge next year for the top GOP spot on the House Financial Services Committee. 

Bachus, who’s led the committee’s Republicans through an unsuccessful battle to defeat Wall Street reform legislation, said he wasn’t concerned with defending his top committee position.

“That’s just a distraction. Articles like that are almost a dime a dozen,” Bachus said of a report suggesting that several other members of the Financial Services committee have begun jockeying for the ranking member position, which could be a chairmanship if Republicans retake the House majority this fall. 

“I want to continue to focus on policy. If you have sound policy and a sound approach, the politics will take care of themselves,” Bachus said. “My focus can’t be on retaining the chairmanship or my own personal benefit. It has to be on the good of the country.”

Bachus seemed unwilling to adapt his approach to an impending chairmanship battle, saying he was unconcerned with defending his position. 

“And I have been criticized for focusing too much on the policy, and not on the politics, but I think I’m not going to change the way I approach my chairmanship,” he said. “As I say, my concern is not the chairmanship next year. These articles do create uncertainty, but I’m not worried about that.”

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said an overhaul of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is the new top legislative priority after President Obama on Wednesday signed broad financial overhaul legislation into law.

“We are going to Fannie, Freddie and housing finance next,” Geithner told reporters at a breakfast held by The Christian Science Monitor. Republicans spent more than a year criticizing the Democrats’ financial regulatory bill, enacted Wednesday, for neglecting changes to the housing finance system.

Fannie and Freddie were taken over by the government in 2008 and put into a federal conservatorship that has committed hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to support the firms.

Geithner said the administration is committed to putting forth a proposal by the beginning of next year.

Community bankers are urging the Senate to pass a small-business bill with a $30 billion lending fund they argue will promote economic growth. 

The Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) and 29 of its affiliated state community banking associations sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Wednesday supporting the small-business lending fund in the legislation. 

In the letter the group calls the lending fund “the core component of this legislation and the provision that holds the most promise for small business job creation in the near term” that will help get credit flowing quickly to the small-business sector.  

A failure to consider the fund in the Senate “would be a missed opportunity that our struggling economy cannot afford,” according to the letter. 

The proposed $30 billion fund “will be a powerful tool to give the nation’s thousands of community banks the leverage to support $300 billion in new small-business lending,” said Paul Merski, chief economist for ICBA, at a press conference today. 

“Anyone who has truly listened to the concerns of small businesses seeking credit should back the small-business lending fund,” he said. 

President Obama said Wednesday he opposes an effort by Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) to expand the federal government’s role in wind insurance coverage.

The White House said in a statement that Taylor’s bill, which has 22 cosponsors, is unnecessary and could cost insurance consumers more in the end.

“The insurance offered through a federal program may not be any less expensive, and could be more expensive, than what is currently offered by private insurers and/or by states,” the administration said in a statement. Taylor’s bill would expand the government’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) to add additional forms of insurance coverage. Taylor has argued that the legislation would reduce the ultimate cost of future hurricanes and other disasters.

“Expanding NFIP to cover windstorm insurance would unnecessarily duplicate available insurance products and could “crowd out” such products where they are offered, while offering little to no savings to the American public. At a time when the NFIP is already facing serious challenges, the administration cannot support such an expansion,” the White House said.