"Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) has floated the idea of a “systemic risk regulator” — possibly the Federal Reserve — that would be charged with identifying risk that could topple the financial system. This could work, but waiting until risk is systemic to identify it means that risk large enough to endanger the system has been allowed to build up.

"Instead, a focus on reforming the smaller agencies, like the OTS, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and others may be the key to a successful reform effort. But perhaps most important of all is this — Obama needs to appoint regulators who believe prudential oversight is important, something the Bush administration excelled at not doing."

At The Existentialist Cowboy there is a review of Obama's budget that states his budget is a return to equality sweeping away the conservative Reagan ideas.

"There was almost universal blow-back against Jindal for his poor performance--mostly style, but also for the pathetic lack of credible substance.  Yet, the fact that he lied garnered no attention whatsoever until it was ferreted out by the blogosphere--and then was picked up by the liberals on MSNBC.

"So, how hard was it to tell that Jindal lied?  Or at least might have, and therefore should have been checked into?  Answer: Not hard at all.  In fact, I was immediately suspicious.  It wasn't any great "nose for news" on my part.  The whole thing just sounded too much like a stale rightwing parable from the git-go, and when it got to the part where Jindal said, "And before I knew it, he was yelling into the phone: 'Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come and arrest him too!'", it had 101st Flying Keyboard Battalion written all over it. 

"Indeed, accurate, professional reporting that Jindal lied on such a high-profile national TV broadcast should have been the occasion for all sorts of media attention.  Remember how back in 1999-2000 the media obsessed over a whole string of lies that Al Gore never told, but the media attributed to him anyway?  And Gore was a sitting Vice President, with decades of public service.  Jindal is a political neophyte, a first-term small-state governor who has never done anything of national significance.  Any sort of minimally functioning press should be all over him for this--not to mention raising a few questions about the party that would tap him for such a job, and then fail to vet his speech for, you know, not being a pack of lies.

"In short, this incident once again reminds us why the establishment media doesn't have a leg to stand on when it attacks bloggers and the blogosphere.

"Instead of complaining about us, they should just do their frikken jobs!"

And speaking of the media and the right wing, Robert Parry at Consortium News reports that President Obama threw down the gauntlet to the right wing with his budget and they and the corporate media will be attacking him.

“For the better part of three decades, a disproportionate share of the nation’s wealth has been accumulated by the very wealthy,” the 142-page budget message states. “Technological advances and growing global competition, while transforming whole industries -- and birthing new ones – has accentuated the trend toward rising inequality.”

"Though Obama lays the bulk of what he calls “a legacy of mismanagement and misplaced priorities” at the feet of the Bush administration, there is no mistaking his larger message – that the problems which were “exacerbated” by Bush’s tax cuts and other pro-rich policies have been building since Reagan’s 1981 inaugural declaration that “government is the problem.”

"Obama even made a glancing reference to that formulation in his preamble to the budget message. “We need to put tired ideologies aside, and ask not whether our government is too big or too small, or whether it is the problem or the solution, but whether it is working for the American people,” Obama said.

"To the American Right, those are fighting words, and leading right-wingers have already trotted out their curious charge of “class warfare,” an ironic message given the fact that the growing disparity in American wealth reveals that “class warfare” has long been at the heart of Reagan-Bush policies – and the rich are winning.

"Yet, while it may be audacious for the young President to take on the well-entrenched forces of reaction in Washington, there is another reason for Obama and his supporters to worry. The national news media remains largely enthralled by the pro-Republican rules of the past three decades.

"In both right-wing and mainstream news organizations, stories continue to be structured as faulting Obama and largely absolving Bush (not to mention the iconic Reagan).

"Look for example at the lead stories in the New York Times and the Washington Post on Saturday. Both describe the stomach-turning 6.2 percent drop in the gross domestic product during the last quarter of 2008. Though that was the last economic quarter of the Bush administration, the stories instead were framed around Obama’s failures.

"The New York Times cites “a sense of disconnect between the projections of the [Obama] White House and the grim realities of everyday American life.” The Washington Post says “the worse-than-expected data fueled doubts about whether the Obama administration had adequately sized up the challenges it faces.”

"What is remarkable about the two stories – and similar ones at other leading newspapers – is that the name “Bush” is nowhere to be found. Instead of a negative slant against Obama, the stories might reasonably have read that George W. Bush left behind an even worse economic mess than previously understood.