Senator Blanche Lincoln seems to have had a come to Jesus moment:
"Proposals that I have seen from the administration have not gone far enough to prevent bailouts of 'too big to fail institutions' and could contain loopholes," Lincoln said. "If we pass reform, it needs to be real reform. My proposal will go further than any other congressional or administration proposal to prevent future bailouts."
As Talking Points Memo puts it:
Lincoln's one of the most conservative Democrats in the Senate, and the White House had been pressuring her not to cede too much to the GOP on the issue. In the end she not only did as they asked, she took them to task for not going far enough to regulate banks.
My goodness, it's almost as if she feared losing her seat or something.
Politico gets to the point:
Lincoln’s plan is certain to evoke widespread opposition from Wall Street and the banking industry. For instance, her provision to move swaps desks out of banks — what her aides have dubbed the "too big to fail" language — could cost major banks billions of dollars of revenues reaped annually from such transactions.
Lincoln chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee, which has much influence over the trading of commodities. She'd been "negotiating" with Republican Saxby Chambliss, which as we've all learned by now is more than a complete waste of time (I don't just mean Chambliss, I mean negotiating with any Republican). Maybe she looked at a poll or something, but she seems to have learned the error of her ways:
With the plug pulled on those negotiations, though, Lincoln actually went ahead and proposed stiffer regulations than other, more progressive Democrats did. And the upshot: she still gets to portray herself as somebody who bucks her party.
As Politico goes on to note, Senator Lincoln has the zeal of the newly converted. Oh my, does she ever:
— first, Lincoln will propose regulating foreign currency swaps, an action even the Treasury Department has opposed;
— second, Lincoln would bar any "major swaps dealers," including big banks, from receiving federal financial assistance in the event of a market meltdown;
— third, the Arkansas Democrat would require dealers to consider their "fiduciary duty" to all governmental agencies, pension plans, endowments or retirement funds during any transaction;
— and fourth, swaps dealers or other traders in the complex financial instruments would be open to fraud actions brought by federal government, if they engage in a transaction with another party knowing the deal could be used to defraud other investors or the public.
TPM gets the final word on this:
Who says primaries don't get results?
Indeed.