In The News
WASHINGTON — Under intense pressure from the Obama administration and Congress, the leader of bailed-out insurance giant AIG declared Wednesday that some of the firm's executives have begun returning all or part of bonuses totaling $165 million.
All four House Republicans from Oklahoma voted against the bill today to levy a huge tax on the bonuses paid to employees of AIG and other firms that received bail-out money from taxpayers.
Rep. Dan Boren, D-Muskogee, voted for the bill, which passed a vote of 328-93.
Minnesota officials have yet to declare a winner in the contested 2008 Senate election, but Roll Call is finally prepared to call another hotly anticipated race whose results were delayed this year: our biennial state-by-state assessment of Congressional clout.
Editorial
One of the problems bedeviling the banking industry might be fixed without throwing billions of dollars at it, so it seems rather amazing that a months-long debate over the matter has continued without a solution.
Oklahoma Congressional District 3 Representative Frank Lucas expressed concern Friday over procedural approaches recently taken by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“We have to get back to what some of us call regular order,” Lucas said during a Friday morning phone interview with the Herald.
Mark-to-market accounting rules were intended to bring transparency and order to the bookkeeping at banks and other large businesses. In theory, the rules are prudent. In practice, the rules are doing more harm than good, and current congressional efforts to reform them deserve consideration.
As the financial crisis grinds on, Congress is taking another look at accounting rules that force banks to value assets at current prices even if they plan to hold them for years.
Last week, Congressman Frank Lucas joined fellow Financial Services Committee member Congressman Ed Perlmutter (CO-07) in introducing H.R. 1349, the Federal Accounting Oversight Board Act of 2009. This bipartisan legislation would create an oversight board to approve and oversee accounting standards and principles.
A committee of the nation's top financial regulators could adjust accounting rules as economic conditions warrant under a bill from Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo., and Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla.
March 6 (Bloomberg) -- Two U.S. lawmakers want to create a regulatory panel that would be able to suspend accounting rules such as the fair-value standard that financial companies have blamed for worsening the global credit crisis.