Where are the regulations on the banks ?

Were they ever re-instated? Did they undo the repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act? Why not?

I heard some so-called "expert" on C-SPAN this morning say that the reason gas is going back up is because the traders are back in business just like they were last year when gas went up to $4.00 per gallon. Furthermore, he said we had a world-wide glut of oil on the market at this time? Shouldn't this be something our Congress should be addressing?

we will see Obama pushing for much regulation.




http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/24/AR2009052401980_pf.html


Obama's Center-Left Two-Step

By E.J. Dionne Jr.
Monday, May 25, 2009

Bill Clinton tried to create a Third Way. President Obama is doing it. This is exciting, but also disconcerting.


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The disturbing aspect of Obama's effort to create his new political alignment is that building it requires him to send rather different messages to its component parts. Playing to several audiences at once can lead to awkward moments.

Last Thursday afternoon, for example, the White House invited in journalists, mostly opinion writers, to sell them on the substance of the president's big speech on Guantanamo and the treatment of detainees.

Unbeknown to the writers until afterward, they had been divided into two groups, one more centrist with a sprinkling of moderate conservatives, the other more liberal. (I was in the liberal group.) The president made an unscheduled appearance at each briefing. As is his way, he charmed both groups.


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Obama's center-left two-step is also on display in the domestic sphere. He is pushing hard for programs progressives have sought for years -- and, in the case of health care, for decades. But on the economic crisis, he has tacked carefully to the center, pushing aside calls for nationalizing the banks and working closely with the financial establishment to revive the economy.

And there's subtlety within his subtlety: Obama wants a more regulated financial market, but he would not disrupt the basic arrangements of American capitalism. If Obama has his way, investment bankers will make a bit less money and pay more in taxes, but they'll continue to be rich.

The establishment Obama is trying to build would make the country better -- more equal, more just and more conscious of the government's constitutional obligations. The far right is being isolated, and Republicans are simply lost.

But establishments have a habit of becoming too confident in their ability to manipulate people and events, and too certain of their own moral righteousness. Obama's political and substantive gifts are undeniable. What he needs to realize are the limits of his own mastery.

Plain and simple truth . . .

By now, the investment banks and commercial banks Glass-Steagal kept apart have been merged so thoroughly that there would be practically no way to spin them off. You'd have to pretty much nationalize everything, dissolve the current banks into one large government-run "United States Bank," and eventually (and gradually) re-privatize them as separate entities once the crisis was over and all the assets, debts, etc. had been unraveled. And not only would that take years, and be a massive federal headache, but there would be zero support for such a blatantly "socialist"-sounding measure.