Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) is up for re-election in 2010 but could be in trouble. A poll taken this past March showed him with an approval rating of about 30%.  Such a low percentage is thanks mostly to published reports that Sen. Dodd was in the ‘Friends of Angelo’ program and received a price break on his mortgage from Countrywide Home Loans.

Former Countrywide chairman and CEO Angelo Mozilo created the program which gave discounted points and fees to selected customers, including elected officials.

Sen. Dodd is actively considering a regulatory reform bill that would create a single federal regulator for financial institutions, stripping supervisory powers away from existing agencies, according to sources on Capitol Hill.

The bill remains a work in progress and could be derailed by several factors due to the fact that it would likely create an interagency systemic risk council rather than give such oversight to the Federal Reserve Board, as the Obama administration has advocated.

With the hope of passing a bill this year, Dodd’s committee is working to finish a draft soon. But whether this version will survive hinges on whether Dodd decides to give up his Senate Banking chairmanship in order to run the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

A new banking chairman would probably tweak the bill and could even take a new approach.

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President Barrack Obama wants Ben Bernanke to remain at his post at the Federal Reserve Board and has re-nominated the Fed chairman to serve for four more years.

The President said he wants Mr. Bernanke to “continue the work he’s doing” to fix the financial system and engineer an economic recovery. And he stressed the need of financial regulatory reform to “ensure we never face another crisis like this again.”

“Ben approached a financial system on the verge of collapse with calm and wisdom; with bold action and out-of-the-box thinking that has helped put the brakes on our economic freefall,” the President said during a break from his vacation on Martha’s Vineyard.

Senate Banking Committee chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., said re-appointing chairman Bernanke is “probably the right choice.” However, Sen. Dodd said he has serious concerns about the Fed’s failure to use its regulatory powers to protect consumers from abusive subprime lending practices.

“Chairman Bernanke was too slow to act during the early stages of the foreclosure crisis, but he ultimately demonstrated effective leadership and his reappointment sends the right signal to the markets,” Sen. Dodd said.

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Give him credit for trying again.
Sen. Johnny Isakson has reintroduced a bill that would give home buyers a tax credit worth 10% of the purchase price of a home up to $15,000. The Georgia Republican unsuccessfully tried to get the credit inserted into the $787 billion stimulus package that went into law in February. Congress instead opted for extending and boosting an existing credit, worth up to $8,000, for first-time buyers. That credit is set to expire Dec. 1.
The proposed credit wouldn’t have income restrictions, unlike the current one, which phases out for individuals making more than $75,000 and couples making more than $150,000.
The legislation already has co-sponsors from both parties, including Senate Banking Committee Chair Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat. In February, congressional budget estimates figured that the $8,000 credit for first-time buyers would cost between $2 and $3 billion, while the $15,000 credit would cost an additional $35.5 billion.
That’s a big hurdle for the bill. Lawmakers would have to justify a considerably larger subsidy for more affluent homebuyers.
Before serving in the Senate, Sen. Isakson spent more than 30 years in the real-estate industry. He opened Northside Realty in Cobb County, Ga., in 1967, and the brokerage later became Georgia’s largest independent residential real-estate brokerage, and one of the largest in the nation, according to Sen. Isakson’s biography.