In This Issue:

Leading the Past Week; Legislative Branch; Senate; House of Representatives; Executive Branch; Miscellaneous; International; and Upcoming Hearings.

Excerpt from Leading the Past Week

With the House of Representatives in Recess this past week all action was found in the Senate where the Banking Committee heard from emboldened regulators seeking to capitalize on the events of the JP Morgan trading loss as justification for tougher regulation and strong implementation of the Dodd-Frank Act, in addition to considering legislation to help spur refinancing and aid the Housing market. Also, the CFPB made the news this week as it announced yet another effort to regulate a heretofore lightly regulated financial product – in this case general purpose prepaid cards.

However the biggest story was the partisan sniping between the Obama and Romney campaigns about the President‘s efforts to paint Romney as a vampire capitalist for his work at Bain Capital. This line of attack, which we should expect to see, in some form of another until November, really represents a broader philosophical question about how one should view wealth – through the prism of the short-term profit or the long-term growth. This question, to which it seems that neither party has an answer, will be elevated as Congress try to deal with the looming ?fiscal cliff? our country is facing, especially during the debate that the House will engage in late July on whether to extend the Bush tax cuts.