For the most part it seems the Senate likes to blow smoke when there is little fire to take action. Will this time be different?

Today the Senate voted 79 to 19 to allow Bill S. 1619: Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act of 2011, to proceed for amendments and a floor vote. The bill is a long overdue measure to provide for identification of misaligned currency. The bill provides a mechanism to require corrective action by the offending currency manipulator nation to correct the currency peg misalignment or face anti-dumping type tariffs. Reuters has a plain English summary of what the bill does. Beyond this cloture vote, the question becomes, will the Senate really do something and pass something to take on China and their flagrant undervaluing of their currency?

Uncle Sam should no longer be Uncle Sucker

Do you think the $5 monthly charge Bank of America announced for its debit card customers is all about squeezing the consumer? Think again. What we are really witnessing are the death throes of an industry – the Too Big To Fail Banks. These are the banks that, at the height of the housing bubble, acted like they were hedge funds. They expected to earn 20% a year on their equity, and they rewarded their top executives accordingly, with bonuses in excess of $10 million for the CEO. Now all sorts of forces are conspiring to drag these banks into the boring, and decidedly non-lucrative status of utilities, earning maybe 5% a year on their equity, with their income capped by government decree. The bank executives don’t like this one bit. They see themselves being sucked down into the quicksand of $100,000 annual bonuses, and they are fighting back with everything they’ve got, even if it means making their cash-strapped customers pay ridiculous fees for services that used to be free.