Last month, as the financial reform process appeared to be going poorly for the banks, Wall Street lobbyists told the Washington Post that they would be looking to Barney Frank for leadership in working out a reform compromise that pleased the banks. While the populists shook their fists, grown-ups like Frank would figure out how to capitulate to Wall Street behind closed doors.

Frank’s moment has finally come. The Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim is reporting that the Congressman from Massachusetts is going to bat for big banks by pushing compromise language on derivatives that will gut the tough reforms sought by Senator Blanche Lincoln.

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A new report from Public Citizen and the Center for Responsive Politics sheds new light on the incredible scale of the financial sector’s lobbying effort. The report has found that the sector employs over 1400 former lawmakers and Congressional staffers.

Last month, we issued a report on the big bank lobby in collaboration with the Campaign for America’s Future. “Big Bank Takeover” identified more than 240 revolving door lobbyists working for one of the six major banks and their principal lobbies.

But expand the scope to include other banks, private equity firms, hedge funds, accounting firms, credit unions, and so on, and the number grows much, much larger. Wikipedia research shows that the number of revolving door lobbyists employed by the industry as a whole is literally larger than the number of soldiers that typically constitute a battalion. This is what the public interest is up against.

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There is a surprisingly tough provision in the current financial reform bill that would force commercial banks to spin off their derivatives trading desks, but big bank lobbyists are fighting hard to make sure Congress strips the language out of the bill.

One rumor floating around Washington is that Democrats will hold off on an amendment that weakens the language until Senator Blanche Lincoln’s primary election in Arkansas on Tuesday. The derivatives language originated in the Senate Agriculture Committee, chaired by Lincoln. A delay will essentially help Congress avoid electoral accountability for caving in to the big banks.

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Over the course of the financial reform process, the six biggest banks and their trade associations have waged an historic assault on democracy, hiring hundreds of revolving door lobbyists and spending hundreds of millions of dollars to push their legislative agenda, according to a report released today by the Campaign for America’s Future.

The report, Big Bank Takeover: How Too-Big-To-Fail’s Army of Lobbyists Has Captured Washington, shows how the six too-big-to-fail banks have hired 243 lobbyists who once worked in the federal government, including 202 who used to work in Congress, with others having worked at the Treasury, the White House, or a relevant federal agency like the SEC. (I authored the report, with assistance from researchers at LittleSis.org).

This translates into an average of 40 revolving door lobbyists per big bank.

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In a 2009 Wall Street Journal interview, the brand new president of BP America, Lamar McKay, answered a question regarding BP’s recent “mishaps and setbacks, ranging from a lethal explosion in a Texas City refinery to a spill in Alaska” by asserting that the company had learned “that consistency, rigor and constancy of operating standards is important and that accountability must be clear.” Apparently this is what “clear accountability” means to the new and improved BP, as CEO Tony Hayward shrilly makes his media rounds incessantly insisting that “the responsibility for safety on the drilling rig is Transocean. It is their rig, their equipment, their people, their systems, their safety processes.” In case you missed it the first time Hayward re-emphasized to CNN that “the systems processes on a drilling rig are the accountability of the per — the drilling rig company” (emphasis mine). This is just the latest example of a warped, unaccountable corporate culture that has become utterly incapable of accepting responsibility for its tragic and costly mistakes.

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The Goldman-Paulson fraud suit threatens to throw a spotlight on a realm of Wall Street that has escaped most scrutiny throughout the financial crisis: the hedge fund industry. Top hedge fund managers profit from Wall Street’s business model of fraud and collusion more than any CEO at the big banks, but tend to evade accountability because of the opacity of their industry and their extraordinary power.

One such hedge fund manager is Richard Perry. Perry, a former Goldman Sachs trader, became known as one of the subprime winners in 2007 — one of the hedge fund managers who saw the crisis coming, and placed profitable bets that the housing market would collapse. Perry reportedly shorted $3 billion in subprime-related securities, netting a $1 billion profit on the trade.

Around the same time, in late 2006 and 2007, Perry’s hedge fund, Perry Corp, began buying up shares in a certain financial management company that had a close business relationship with Goldman Sachs. His stake grew from 5% to 8% (around $30 million in early 2007), to the point where Perry Corp was disclosed as a major shareholder in the company in the prospectus for one CDO put together by Goldman in August 2007.

That company: ACA Capital, the same firm wrapped up in the Goldman Sachs-John Paulson CDO deal that the SEC has deemed fraudulent.

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Individuals from Paulson & Co., the hedge fund at the center of a fraud suit brought by the SEC against Goldman Sachs, have given nearly one hundred thousand dollars in campaign donations to New York Attorney General and presumed gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo. Paulson & Co. is not charged in the suit, but its role in the generation of a mortgaged-backed security sold by Goldman Sachs lies at the heart of the SEC’s claim.

According to the New York State Board of Elections’ campaign finance data, John Paulson and his employees Putnam Coes, Paolo Pellegrini, Stuart Merzer, Michael Waldorf, and Andrew Hoine donated a combined $92,650 to Cuomo’s campaigns since 2008. The largest sums were given in 2009 by Paulson’s former partner Paolo Pellegrini ($45,000 on June 3rd) and Paulson himself ($25,000 on April 29th).

Paulson & Co. was also implicated in the recent Greek debt crisis, where it sought to profit from a fiscal situation that stemmed in part from swaps arranged by Goldman Sachs.

Paulson’s firm made huge profits in recent years by betting against the subprime mortgage industry.

Cuomo’s top campaign contributors include another hedge fund owner who profited by shorting subprime; James Dinan, head of York Capital Management gave Cuomo $25,000 in January 2008, and an additional $50,000 in June 2009. Dinan is also a major contributor to former NYS Insurance Commissioner and AG candidate Eric Dinallo ($55,900 in October 2009). Dinallo also received $10,000 from John Paulson and $5,000 from Paulson’s employee Michael Waldorf.

Our investigation of the bubble barons concluded earlier this month — below is the piece I wrote for AlterNet, summarizing our findings. A big thanks to all the analysts who participated! On to social security.

Following the deadly mine explosion in West Virginia last week, the CEO of the company that owned the mine quickly emerged as a sort of Dickensian villain in media reports. Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship’s cavalier, profit-obsessed approach to mining had led him to dismiss pressing safety concerns at his mines. He had called safety regulators “as silly as global warming” and ordered managers to spend more time “running coal” and less time building ventilation structures. One miner told ABC News that working for Blankenship was “like living under a hammer. It’s all about the bottom line, we all know that.”

Blankenship was the hammer, but whose bottom line was he looking out for, exactly? The answer is somewhat surprising.

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By Dennis J. Seese aka sundin

Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy — the company that owned the mine where disaster struck last week — notoriously commented to Forbes in 2003 that “we don’t pay much attention to the violation count” even though the same article went on to note that the company’s three biggest rivals mined “twice as much coal in the state as Massey” and were only cited 175 times collectively, as opposed to Massey’s 501 citations in 2000-2001. Blankenship chalked it up to Massey’s being “unfairly targeted” by regulators (a common theme). Yet, a member of West Virginia’s Surface Mining Board referred to one of the violations Massey wasn’t “paying attention to” in this time period as “absolutely the worst behavior by any company that any member of this board has ever seen over the decades that this board has been in existence.”

But, honestly, why should Mr. Blankenship pay attention to violations when he can buy sympathetic judges and friendly legislators adverse to enforcing, and in some cases favoring efforts to roll back, those unfortunate regulations?

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The death toll in the West Virginia mining explosion has climbed to 25, the worst mining accident since 1984, and the company that owns the mine, Massey Energy, is coming under intense scrutiny for a record of safety violations that suggests it could have done far more to guard against disasters like the one that occurred on Monday.

Think Progress has compiled extensive data on violations at Massey’s Upper Big Branch Mine, where the accident occurred, showing that the company has been cited a staggering 3,007 times since 1995 for violations at that mine, with assessed fines of $2.2 million (Massey is currently contesting $1.1 million of that amount).

Disregard for worker safety was central to Massey’s business model: keep labor costs low to keep profits running high. That meant breaking unions and issuing memos like this one from CEO Don Blankenship which informed mine superintendents that “RUNNING COAL” was more important than any safety-related activity in the mines.

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