I've not seen it getting much play in the blogosphere, but the Center for Public Integrity unveiled a hefty new web site tracking the subprime efforts, lending standards, and lobbying dollars of the major banks. The point of the report is simple: They meant to do this. Not "this" insofar as it means getting their compensation capped and falling into insolvency. But "this" insofar as it means popularizing subprime loans. As CPI writes, "These big institutions were not only unwitting victims of an unforeseen financial collapse, as they have sometimes portrayed themselves, but enablers that bankrolled the type of lending that has threatened the financial system." There's even a widget. (The widget broke the blog. The widget is evil. The widget hates you. Beware!) It's a convincing presentation. But the piece that got front page play in The Financial Times is the lobbying bit: "The top 25 US originators of subprime mortgages -- the risky assets that sparked the global financial crisis --...

Steny Hoyer, it seems, is making some noises about Social Security reform. Good luck with that, I guess. The interesting nugget in the article, however, is that "House and Senate leaders have resisted the idea of naming a special commission to work on the problem, insisting that congressional committees can handle it." Hoyer is, of course, one of those leaders. And this makes Social Security reform much harder. What liberals fear on Social Security reform is something like the proposed Conrad-Gregg Commission. A bipartisan commission that creates a set of recommendations and then fast tracks them through Congress. In general, the idea behind these proposals is that Congress can't change the commission's recommendation: It just votes up-or-down. Trying to run entitlement reform through the normal congressional process is like trying to run the Iditarod on a tight rope: You can't balance the two sides. A solution conservatives will support would be anathema to liberals. A solution...

I mentioned yesterday that Chuck Schumer's public plan compromise wasn't a freelance effort: Max Baucus had deputized him to work through the options on the public plan. But he's not the only Finance Committee member that received some homework from Baucus. In fact, Baucus has given every Democrat on the committee a different piece of health reform to focus in on. Sources say that some are taking them more seriously than others, and obviously no single senators gets the last word. But the assignments have been a way for Baucus to delegate some of the work and involve all the Democrats on the Finance Committee. This is the list: Jay Rockefeller: Medicaid Expansion, Premium Subsidies, Quality Improvements Kent Conrad: Comparative Effectiveness, Chronic Care Management Jeff Bingaman: Pay-for-Performance, Bundled Payments, IHS John Kerry: Heath Information Technology, Exchange, Small Business Tax Credit Blanche Lincoln: Small-Group Rating Reforms, Small Business Tax Credit Ron Wyden: Tax...

I'm on the record in my admiration for the Wyden-Bennett health reform plan. I think it's better than what Barack Obama offered during the campaign and better than what we're likely to get come the end of this process. I explain why here . But the Wyden-Bennett plan tends to be very popular among people who are interested in health economics and somewhat less popular among more traditional health care advocates. And they make a good point. In my experience, their problem is not, as Jon Cohn suggests , that "liberals don't like the Wyden-Bennett plan...primarily because it lacks a public insurance option." That's a problem, but given the radicalism of the proposal, I'd take the trade. Rather, the concern is with the guts of the Wyden-Bennett cost control mechanisms.

A couple days ago, we were hearing leaks from "people familiar with the matter" who said that the stress test's "preliminary findings have revealed that Citi, which has already been bailed out three times by the authorities, could need an extra $10bn or more if the economy worsens. BofA, which has had $45bn in government aid, was found to need well in excess of $10bn." Today, we're hearing that "well in excess of $10 billion" means an eye-popping $35 billion. As Kevin Drum notes , that's nearly half the value of the entire company. BofA either needs to raise this money on the private market or come back for more government funding (which could take the form of TARP funds or equity purchases or something else I probably haven't thought of). They're promising to find it on the market, but that seems virtually impossible. J. Steele Alphin, the BofA executive dispatched to give the Times some calming quotes, is keeping a brave face, however. “We’re not happy about it because it’s still a...

I don't have a particular opinion on Sonia Sotomayor, the Second Circuit Court judge who has emerged as an early frontrunner -- and an early point of controversy -- for David Souter's replacement. But having mentioned Jeffrey Rosen's article quoting anonymous associates of Sotomayor who oppose her nomination and question her intellectual capacity, it's also worth excerpting this missive from Professor Robin Kar, a former Sotomayor clerk who's not afraid to sign her name when she opines on her former boss: I count myself privileged to have worked closely with some of the very best minds in the world, in both law (at Yale Law School and in the legal academy) and philosophy (at both Harvard College and the University of Michigan’s graduate school, which was widely considered the best department in ethics in the world when I was there.) Judge Sotomayor stands out from among these people as one of the very brightest; indeed, she is in that rarified class of people for whom it makes sense...

Tim Geithner is set to decree that if banks want to repay their TARP loans and slip out of the compensation caps and oversight rules that come with government backing, then they'll have to also sacrifice the sweet, sweet lending arrangements the Feds have been giving them through the FDIC. In other words, you can't only leave the government subsidies you don't like. The bottom line for the banks is that if they want out of TARP, they have to be able to withdraw from all the other sources of emergency public support that the government has given them. If they want the support, then they have to agree to the conditions and regulations that come with TARP. No subsidies without regulations. To put it into more common terms, banks can decide to break up with the government or they can decide to stay together. But they don't get to be friends with benefits.