I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
The United States Senate voted 60-39 to pass a sweeping financial reform bill today, “overhauling the regulation of everything from the biggest banks to consumer financial products to exotic instruments like credit-default swaps to the derivatives used by farmers.”
Like the vote on cloture, three Republicans, Sens. Scott Brown, R-Mass., Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, crossed the aisle to vote with the Democrats. One Democrat, Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., voted against the bill because he thought the bill wasn’t strong enough.
Both Senators from New Mexico, Tom Udall and Jeff Bingaman, voted for the legislation.
According to The Washington Independent, “The biggest sticking point for reform in the Senate — and one of the reasons the bill took longer than in the House — concerned derivatives, which allow an investor to hedge against price fluctuations in a stock, commodity or other product.” An amended version of the provision made it into the final version of the bill.
The United States Senate voted 60-38 earlier today to invoke cloture on a large financial regulation bill. After weeks of setbacks and delays, including the death of longest-serving member of Congress, Robert Byrd, the bill finally got the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster and move onto a final vote.The final vote is expected sometime this afternoon.
The New York Times reported that “Passage of the bill would herald the end of more than a generation in which the prevailing posture of Washington toward the financial industry was largely one of hands-off admiration, evidenced by steady deregulation.”
Much of the blame for the current recession has been laid at the feet of Wall Street.
The Washington Independent reported:
The bill impacts all parts of the financial system, from payday lenders to hedge funds to mortgage underwriters to debit cards. But it contains three central provisions. First, it provides the government with new powers to identify risky banking institutions and to shut them down before they harm the broader financial system, via a new systemic regulator. Second, it makes banks less risky, forcing them to keep more capital on hand, banning them from making risky trades on their own behalf and keeping them from investing heavily in vehicles like hedge funds. Finally, it creates a new consumer financial protection bureau, which will have the power to create and enforce new rules regarding financial products like home-equity loans and credit cards.
The bill had already passed the House with bipartisan, though mainly Democratic, support, including that of all three members of the House from New Mexico.
