In This Issue:

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

Excerpt from Leading the Past Week -

Last week marked the second anniversary of the Dodd-Frank Act, but instead of presents, the House of Representatives marked the occasion with a continuing series of hearings aimed at exposing the flaws of the measure. Bookending this was the admission of Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfien that the law did more good than bad. Regardless of one?s perception of the impact of Dodd-Frank, the fact remains that the law has been implemented slowly. As we hit the two year mark, 221 rulemaking deadlines having passed, but only 85 of those rulemakings have concluded with final rules being implemented, as 136 of the deadlines have been missed. Outside of Dodd-Frank the threat of sequestration and the looming “fiscal cliff” continued to dominate as Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke appeared before both Chambers to provide his semiannual report to Congress, and spent considerable time touching on the need for Congressional action on the fiscal cliff, continued stressors from Europe and the need for LIBOR reforms. Interestingly as scrutiny intensifies over the LIBOR rigging scandal, it came to light that Congress appears to have neglected to call on the three US banks (Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase) as part of its investigation into the manipulation of the benchmark rate.