Congress is again showing their deliberate ignorance, controlled by their Wall Street puppet masters.

The Democratic majority keeps passing watered down, ineffective legislation as they did with the health care bill and are now doing with financial industry regulation acting more and more like their GOP colleagues.

Even after the housing bubble financial debacle with its disastrous consequences to regular Americans, Capitol Hill continues to stumble and bumble, intentionally it appears, in order to maintain the foxes in the hen houses, keeping their greedy Wall Street gazzilionaire crony crook contributors happy and wealthy.

The latest from McClatchy Newspapers: "As the bottom fell out of the housing market and complex mortgage-backed securities began tanking in 2007, a strange thing happened at Moody's Investors Service, one of the largest firms that rate bonds for the risks they pose to investors.

"Moody's blue-ribbon board of directors stopped receiving key information from an internal committee that was supposed to keep the board informed of risks to the company, a McClatchy investigation has found.

"Instead, the ad hoc risk-management committee suddenly disappeared, precisely at the time when the board and management should have been shifting to higher alert as the financial world began quaking.

"As McClatchy reported last year, the credit-rating agency had been handing out Triple-A grades like candy for Wall Street mortgage securities that were backed by pools of home loans that turned out to be junk.

"When the global financial crisis deepened in 2007 and the integrity of bond ratings came under attack, the captains of industry on the Moody's board seldom asked tough questions, according to former Moody's executives who made presentations to the board.

"That's important, because the legislation to overhaul financial regulation that's now moving through Congress aims to empower ratings-agency boards by requiring a direct line of communication between the company officials who police for risks and the boards. It's not clear whether that would have made any difference at Moody's.

"The findings of the new McClatchy investigation not only call into question the value of the new regulatory approach lawmakers are drafting; they also help underscore the widespread criticism that many corporate boards practice crony capitalism rather than independence."

But then, most elected representatives on Capitol Hill are controlled by the players in that crooked game that has been so deadly for this country.

One question shows that Washington is corporatist not populist and not serious about passing strong, effective financial industry regulation:  Why haven't the Senate and House reinstated Glass-Steagall?