Derivatives Lobbying and Bailout Conflicts

by Alexandra Andrews
ProPublica, June 1, 2009, 9:40 a.m.

0 Comments
Republish
Email

Your email Your name Friends’ email(s) max 10, separated by commas Personal message
Print

Here are our editors’ picks from today’s roundup of investigative stories around the Web. Was there a story we missed? Please keep sending us your picks or include them in the comments section below.

A lobbyist memo pushing big banks’ interests has “played a pivotal role in shaping the debate over derivatives regulation” in Washington, reports the New York Times. Aspects of a Treasury Department proposal, which critics say contains a major loophole, resemble the memo. But “Treasury officials say that their proposal was arrived at independently.”

Also, the U.S. relies on private contractors to help manage the bailout, but many of those firms have conflicts of interest that let them “work both sides of the rescue,” reports the Washington Independent. Treasury issued a rule to address the problem in January, but it leaves firms to identify and police conflicts on their own.