The Federal Reserve chairman said that the economy should grow through 2011 but that the jobless rate would come down slowly.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) on Wednesday asked C-SPAN to televise the public hearings of final negotiations on the Wall Street overhaul package.

House and Senate lawmakers will meet this month to hash out differences in a conference agreement on the 1,500-page bill. Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has pushed for C-SPAN to cover the conference process in full.

C-SPAN is airing the opening hearing. Frank asked for the rest of the hearings to be televised as well.

"As we move forward, I urge you to provide the necessary resources to ensure that the American people are able to watch the public portions and the voting of the conference committee," Frank said in a letter to Brian Lamb, chairman and CEO of C-SPAN. "I believe it is vital that after the financial crisis of 2008, the American people are able to view the public proceedings."

In reaction to the Swiss blocking the U.S. from the names of potential tax evaders, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked Treasury officials to try another route in securing at least a partial list of those individuals.

The names sought are of U.S. citizens suspected of opening accounts at the Swiss bank UBS to evade U.S. taxes. Grassley contends that a former employee at the bank, Bradley Charles Birkenfeld, has already supplied the U.S. with the names and contact information of UBS AG employees, which could be used to identify their U.S. clients.

"It seems this information would allow the IRS to trace individuals in the U.S. that had UBS bank accounts," Grassley wrote in a June 8 letter to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman.

The House-Senate conference on financial regulatory reform legislation will begin Thursday and could conclude by the time President Barack Obama leaves for the Group of 20 meeting later this month. 

The conference is expected to last between six and eight days, beginning at 2:15 p.m. Thursday and running Tuesday through Thursday next week in the House and Tuesday through Thursday the week of June 21 in the Senate, House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) told The Hill Tuesday night. 

Obama is scheduled to leave June 24 for the G-20 in Toronto, the seventh day of the conference, if lawmakers need that much time. If necessary, the conference to reconcile the differences between the finance bills could go through Saturday, June 26, Frank said. 

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The Congressional Black Caucus has cautioned Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) against moving legislation that would cap Caribbean rum tax subsidies used by Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands to help fund infrastructure projects.  

"We note with alarm that a bill that you have introduced has the potential to cause irreparable harm to the economy and the people of the U.S. Virgin Islands," the CBC wrote to Menendez on May 11.

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BP pledged Tuesday an undetermined amount of money to create a new fund aimed at protecting and rehabilitating wildlife along four Gulf Coast states.

The oil giant will "donate the net revenue from oil recovered from the spill" to a new wildlife fund to "create, restore, improve and protect wildlife habitat along the coastline of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida," according to a release on BP's website this afternoon. No specifics on the funding mechanism or on the potential projects were announced. 

In total, BP will deposit its share of the net revenue — about 53 percent of the total sales price — into the new wildlife fund. 

BP didn't speculate on how much could be raised for the fund because it will be based on the amount of oil collected and the price when sold. The company also expects "that each barrel of collected oil will sell at a lower price than regular crude," because it contain a higher concentration of menthanol, used during the containment process. 

Creation of the fund is "over and above BP's obligations under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990," according to a company release.

BP should pay $10 billion into a Gulf Coast Recovery Fund to ensure damages caused by the oil spill are covered. 

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) called on the Justice Department to "enter into a formal agreement" with BP that would be jointly managed by the federal government and BP, or legislation may be needed to ensure they pay for the damages, he said. 

"BP has averaged $15 billion a year in profits over the past 10 years," Dorgan said Tuesday on the Senate floor. "Asking them to make a payment of much less than one year's profits into a Gulf Coast Recovery Fund that will be jointly managed with public as well as the private sector management will be a start to nailing down the commitment that I believe is necessary to respond to the growing costs of this disaster."

Dorgan, a senior member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said Justice Department officials have said that BP's pledge to pay for the damages isn't binding. 

  Cross-posted from Blog Briefing Room. 

Private equity investment would decrease by several billion a year while causing a loss of jobs under a pending carried interest proposal, according to a new study. 

Increasing the tax rate on profits earned by investment fund managers would reduce private equity investment by $7 billion a year, from $34 billion to $27 billion annually, according to a study by the Private Equity Council tracking the connection between tax rates and private equity investment. 

"This data is consistent over two decades and confirms that tax increases reduce private equity investment activity and that the proposed 157 percent tax increase on investment partnerships would have a harmful effect on the economy, the recovery and job creation," PEC President Douglas Lowenstein said in a release Tuesday. "We have said throughout this debate that private equity will continue, but this will have an adverse economic impact."

Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) made some changes Tuesday to the carried interest provisions that would tax as regular income 65 percent of the carried interest paid as compensation to those in private equity investments after 2012. The House version taxes 75 percent as regular income, with a rate as high as 39.6 percent. 

Right now, all carried interest is taxed at 15 percent, the capital gains rate. That rate will increase to 20 percent when the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of this year.