March 11th, 2010
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Senate negotiators are considering giving the Fed the authority to supervise nonbank financial institutions that are so large and intertwined that their failure could pose a risk to the entire economy, according to people familiar with the evolving legislation.
The Fed also would retain its power to oversee nearly two dozen bank holding companies that hold [...]
March 4th, 2010
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“What seems to be emerging is the consolidation” of two Treasury bank agencies “with FDIC having some responsibility for state banks as regulator in lieu of the Fed,” Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat and a member of the Senate Banking Committee, said yesterday in a Washington interview.
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March 1st, 2010
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Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, joined committee Republicans in seeking an alternative to the Obama proposal. Democrats and Republicans are still seeking a deal to place consumer powers within another regulator, said people with knowledge of the discussions who declined to be identified because the talks are private.
[...]
October 29th, 2009
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The House Financial Services Committee measure lays out steps for dealing with the biggest institutions and gives the Federal Reserve power to shrink firms that pose a systemic risk. The bill, released yesterday, is a compromise worked out by the Treasury Department and Chairman Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat.
[...]
September 27th, 2009
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Yet when a Senate committee was exploring ways to secure computer networks, a provision to give the president the power to shut down Internet traffic to compromised Web sites in an emergency set off alarms.
Corporate leaders and privacy advocates quickly objected, saying the government must not seize control of the Internet.
Lawmakers dropped it, but the [...]
August 3rd, 2009
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As the Senate writes a bill to control greenhouse gases, the groups are swarming over a pot of free permits that cap carbon emissions and create a trading system of pollution rights.
Lawmakers want to broker peace the way they did two [...]
June 17th, 2009
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The country often responds to crises with a raft of new laws and rules designed to keep whatever caused the crisis from happening again.
Washington is home to many large federal buildings that stand as monuments to past bursts of crisis-driven government intervention: the Commerce Department, Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the departments [...]
June 12th, 2009
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The Environmental Protection Agency classified the 44 sites as potential hazards to communities while investigating coal ash waste storage sites after a spill at a Tennessee power plant in December. The classification means the waste sites could cause death and significant property damage if an event such as a storm, a terrorist attack or a [...]
June 7th, 2009
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More than a century after Edison invented a reliable light bulb, the nations electricity distribution system, an aging spider web of power lines, is poised to move into the digital age.
The “smart grid” has become the buzz of the electric power industry, at the White House and among members of Congress. President Barack Obama says [...]
June 6th, 2009
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More than a century after Edison invented a reliable light bulb, the nations electricity distribution system, an aging spider web of power lines, is poised to move into the digital age.
The “smart grid” has become the buzz of the electric power industry, at the White House and among members of Congress. President Barack Obama says [...]