Spitting on a Gift Horse.

“They’re not accustomed to being engaged in politics this way,” says a private-equity investor. ‘Their skin isn’t toughened. They actually take [the attacks by Obama] personally. This is a profession with a lot of smart people, but who aren’t necessarily terribly introspective. They think they actually deserve to make all this money. So any attack on their livelihood is, ahem, unpleasant.’“

In the wake of the Senate’s 59-39 passage of financial reform last week (not to mention increasing evidence of rampant and pervasive fraud at Goldman, Morgan, and elsewhere), New York‘s John Heilemann surveys the bruised egos of Wall Street’s would-be robber barons. (In very related news, Paul Krugman and the WP note that Wall Street is now betting heavily on the GOP again.)

Keep in mind: Wall Street is angry with the administration despite the fact that “Geithner’s team spent much of its time during the debate over the Senate bill helping…kill off or modify amendments being offered by more-progressive Democrats.” [Change we can believe in!] Heilemann writes: “Whatever the effects of the bill, among them will be neither an end to the too-big-too-fail doctrine nor any curb on what the sharpest Wall Streeters see as the central threat to the system’s stability: excessive financial leverage. Geithner, Summers, and Obama had little interest in tackling those matters, not because they are indentured servants to Wall Street but because at heart they are all technocrats who believe the system doesn’t need to be rebooted or downsized, merely better supervised.“

Still, on the bright side and despite the ambivalence (or open opposition) from folks in high places, this bill did get significantly stronger on the Senate floor, and in some ways is now stronger than the House version passed last year. Let’s hope this welcome progressive trend continues in conference.

In a Flash, a Grim Recognition.

“The initial reaction of traders to the Flash Crash was that some human must have made a mistake submitting a trade. But the SEC…hasn’t found evidence of a ‘Fat Fingered Louie’ punching a billion rather than a million on an order. In fact, the SEC still doesn’t know what caused this crash. Curiously, no one is focusing on what caused the crash to stop…JP Morgan and Merrill Lynch were big buyers precisely as the market hit minus one thousand points on the Dow. It seems rather odd that both these firms at the same time would see the same trading opportunity.

In fact, what they did was violate one of the prime rules of trading: never try to catch a falling knife. The market was falling fast and furious at the point they entered the pit to buy equity futures, so why did they take such an enormous risk? We learned yesterday that both of these firms, plus Goldman Sachs, were such superb traders in the market that none of them had a single losing trading day all last quarter. This type of risky trade is not how you get to be a superb trader.“

Over at the Agonist, Numerian digs deep into last week’s “Flash Crash” — and comes to some very troubling conclusions. To wit, the big players know the thresholds where the trading algorithms kick in, and thus, basically, the fix is in. “The stock market seems to be nothing but a playground for the big banks and other connected firms who get a preview peek at everything that goes through the market, and who can program their computers to skim profits off daily with no risk whatever. The stock market is also, quite possibly, prone to more serious manipulation that resulted in last Thursday’s crash.“

Oof. I’m out of my comfort zone when it comes to understanding market behavior, so I hope someone has a better explanation for the Flash Crash than the disconcertingly plausible one offered here. (Just saying Greece doesn’t quite cut it, I don’t think.)

Bank to Basics.

“The big U.S. banks were the source of the global financial crisis, in part because their bigness and their practices were copied by major banks around the world. What happens in this reform effort is being watched avidly in many countries, because it will say much about how global finance is to be conducted. What is often missing in these discussions are the assumptions people make about banking and its role in a modern economy. We should begin therefore with some first principles.“

As the manifestly fradulent behavior by Goldman Sachs of late comes to full light — one among many, it seems — Numerian of The Agonist goes back to basics to make a case for strong banking reform. “The very first lesson we should learn from this crisis, which we thought this nation learned in the 1930s, is never again…The second lesson we should learn from this crisis is that we should not as a nation have to learn these lessons over and over again every 80 years. Something has to be done to make the legislative changes this time stick.”

Bailout, or we all sink.

“‘Today’s the decision day. I wish it weren’t the case,’ said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.).” Despite the apparent attempt by divider-not-a-uniter John McCain to kill a compromise he hadn’t even read last week, the Dubya White House and Congress hold their respective noses and come to agreement on Paulson’s $700 billion bailout plan, with debate in the House starting today. “The proposed legislation would authorize Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. to initiate what is likely to become the biggest government bailout in U.S. history, allowing him to spend up to $700 billion to relieve faltering banks and other firms of bad assets backed by home mortgages, which are falling into foreclosure at record rates. The plan would give Paulson broad latitude to purchase any assets from any firms at any price and to assemble a team of individuals and institutions to manage them.“

As I said here, I’m not all that happy about the nation having to subsume the risk, and ride to the rescue of, the many banks and Wall Street types that profited massively from these obviously suspect mortgage deals. But, what else is there to do? As with so much else occurring over the past eight years, it befalls us now to clean up the mess left by the free market fundies of late. I just hope we learn something from the economic consequences of this latest binge of free-market fraudulence, before they grow too dire. To wit, whatever the corporate-funded right tells you about self-regulating markets, we need, and will continue to need, real refs on the field.

Update: Uh oh. The bailout compromise dies in the House, prompting the Dow Jones to swiftly tank 700 points. “The measure needs 218 votes for passage. Democrats voted 141 to 94 in favor of the plan, while Republicans voted 65 to 133 against. That left the measure with 206 votes for and 227 against.“

As the TIME article linked above noted before the vote, “the candidate with the most riding on Monday’s vote is McCain, who backed the concerns of conservatives in the House over the initial agreement…[I]f a majority of the House Republicans don’t vote for the measure, McCain could lose political face. ‘If McCain cannot persuade them, it is hard to portray him as a leader,’ said Clyde Wilcox, a political science professor at Georgetown University.” So, that’s the silver lining, I guess. But the bad news now, alas, is considerably worse.