I wanted to take note of this one story from last week, about the fact that the foreclosure fraud settlement is only a three-year agreement, meaning that all the vaunted reforms of the servicing market end up expiring at the end of the time period. But the solution lies with Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s efforts to adopt permanent standards for servicers.

In what at first glance looks like a major concession, ALEC, the embattled right-wing legislation factory for state and local government, announced they would refocus their efforts solely on economic issues, and eliminate a task force they had devoted to social and cultural issues, like guns and voter ID laws and abortion.

The EPA will announce the first federal rules against fracking. Curiously, the rules have nothing to do with the Clean Water Act, but seek to reduce the air pollution around fracking sites, also a serious concern, though much of the attention around the corrosive side effects of fracking has revolved around water contamination.

I mentioned earlier today that the President issued an executive order to create an interagency working group to oversee hydraulic fracturing, the process used in extracting natural gas. This order creates no regulations on fracking on federal lands, or on the development of environmental and public health standards associated with fracking generally. It just coordinates the “Interagency Working Group to Support Safe and Responsible Development of Unconventional Domestic Natural Gas Resources,” between 13 different federal agencies and headed up by the head of the White House Domestic Policy Council.

Instead of setting clear limits, or just banning multiple types of antibiotics for use in livestock (as this legislation from Louise Slaughter would do), the FDA just prescribed “voluntary limits.” Why? Because they’ve been trying to ban antibiotics in livestock since 1977. And agribusiness along with pharmaceutical companies lobby against it, and it doesn’t happen. So we’re reduced to begging drugmakers to stop facilitating the fact that the hamburger on our plates is filled with penicillin and tetracycline.

Apple announced a roughly $10 billion annual dividend and a share buy-back program, designed to make use of their hundreds of billions in cash reserves. They estimate it will cost about $45 billion over the next three years, but that leaves tens of billions in profits oversees, while Apple lobbies Congress for a tax-free repatriation of foreign profits.

We know that Wall Street speculation shoulders part of the blame for rising gas prices, and that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has done little to stop it. But I didn’t know that even the weak CFTC rules established last year were being challenged in federal court. And the outcome of that court case could lead to speculation running rampant without a check from federal regulators.

This week marks the end of the public comment period on the Volcker rule. The usual suspects have all delivered their comments. The huge finance lobby delivered their mass of comments, in particular calls for multiple exemptions and waivers. But a new group, Occupy the SEC, a collection of experts in finance which sprung out of the Occupy Wall Street movement, delivered a 325 page letter to the SEC about the rule reminding the SEC about their obligations to the public.

The House passed a watered-down version of the STOCK Act, the bill that would ban insider trading among members of Congress as the Office of Congressional Ethics investigates Rep. Spence Bachus for insider trading.

When the Senate passed the STOCK Act, the bill that bans insider trading on non-public information picked up in Congress (yes, that’s not against the law right now) along with some other ethics reforms, I thought that could be a vehicle that would move expeditiously through the House. However, even though Majority Leader Eric Cantor made promises that the STOCK Act would get a vote this week, instead what has happened is a free-for-all, with lobbyists gutting the bill at Cantor’s behest.