Four banks were closed by the FDIC yesterday, bringing the 2010 total up to 90 — a number we didn’t reach last year until after Labor Day. The Fed, meanwhile, seems comfortable with high unemployment and apparently thinks the banks are doing just fine. But one potential financial reform proposal — the Kanjorski Amendment — still remains in play, which would take power away from the Fed and put it in the hands of a systemic risk council, which would be expected to either break up or strongly regulate institutions that pose a systemic risk.

Meanwhile, the FDIC is hiring a new Senior Congressional Relations Manager. Sounds like he or she will have some serious business on their desk on the day he or she walks in the door.

If there’s a social program left standing in the moonscape Obama’s Hamilton Project masters inflicted on America, Greenstone and the Project are there to ensure Obama nukes it. If someone you care deeply about depends on Social Security – or will depend on Social Security – call them up today and tell them you love them. Because Team Obama has targeted Social Security…and your loved ones are just the MOTU’s version of collateral damage. Deaths you can believe in, right?

Senate Republicans say they’re against both the bailouts and the Democrats’ proposed legislation to end them. They say that Sen. Dodd’s bill would “actually guarantees future bailouts.” It’s time for the Republicans to put up or shut up. Will they make Dodd’s bill better by breaking up the too big to fail banks and putting new rules in place that never let them get so big and systemically risky, or will they shill for Wall Street?

[Welcome Simon Johnson, and Host William Black, author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One [As a courtesy to our guests, please keep comments to the book.  Please take other conversations to a previous thread.] Thirteen Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown The authors begin their book [...]