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The Dodd Financial Bill: Thursday on the Jim Vicevich Show

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Your calls plus … David John from The Heritage Foundation. John is the Senior Research Fellow in Retirement Security and Financial Markets. Listen here tomorrow.

David John is one of five experts who “exert more influence” on the Social Security debate than anyone else in Washington – and he is The Heritage Foundation’s lead analyst on issues relating to pensions, financial markets and institutions, banking regulation, asset building, and Social Security reform.

Join us as we get to the bottom of the “Dodd Bill” that would regulate financial institutions and hand more power to the White House to determine just who is too big to fail. Here’s what John has written.

There are many valid reasons to be angry with bankers, and supporters of Senator Chris Dodd’s (D-CT) latest rewrite of his financial regulatory bill, the Restoring American Financial Stability Act, have mentioned them all. Americans have heard all about greedy bankers, huge bonuses, shady accounting practices, and outright greed. But the reason for this rhetoric is nothing less than an attempt to seize control of the financial services industry and to micromanage it.

Republicans are pushing back but Democrats are pushing hard for the “Restoring American Financial Stability Act”.

Obama, speaking briefly to reporters before the closed meeting began, said he was “absolutely confident that the bill that emerges is going to be a bill that prevents bailouts. That’s the goal.”

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner later said that the cost of taking down large failing financial institutions will be borne by big banks, not taxpayers. The House and Senate bills call for funds, financed by large financial institutions, to cover the costs of liquidating firms deemed too large to go through bankruptcy proceedings.

Get the real story tomorrow morning at 11am.

Symptom of the Disease: Politicians and their investments (Example 2)

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For my next Symptom of the Disease example we review politicians and their personal finances. When politicians are involved with the regulation of business, they automatically are privy to a defacto version of insider trading. Cleveland.com reports members of the House Financial Services Committee were buying and selling banking and financial service stocks last fall.

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Dodd’s Dangerous Dance. Plus Dodd vs Kudlow?

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Instapundit continues to blaze the web trail tacking everything and all Dodd and we are more than happy to help get the word out. You can catch it here.

Like any Washington survivor who senses that the political tide is shifting, Dodd knows he must swim with it or sink in its wake.

And for Dodd, the danger of drowning is quite real. He’s up for reelection in 2010, and he has seen his poll numbers drop dramatically since a report last year about his alleged special mortgage deal from Countrywide Financial.

“Dodd actually is a vulnerable incumbent right now,” said Gary Rose, chairman of the government and politics department at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn. “This is an effort on his part to once again re-establish himself as a man of the people.”

Absolutely … As we mentioned on the show, who doesn’t own three homes, two of which we know are or were valued at about a million bucks. But my favorite part is this ….

But can Dodd make that turn and still count on the support of financial services firms — or at least those that still exist — to keep pumping money into his campaign coffers?

Plus: The Courant is reporting CNBC’s Larry Kudlow might challenge the Countrywide Kid … how about that?