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Fed gets new oversight powers under Dodd bill.

(Reuters) - The Federal Reserve would win sweeping new powers over nonbank financial firms and keep much of its authority over banks, under revised legislation to be unveiled on Monday by the chief architect of financial reform in the Senate...Link

Fed audit inching closer...........

A proposal on which U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, has been working for much of the last decade is getting close to reality: an audit-the-Federal Reserve requirement that has been approved in the U.S. House and is pending in the Senate as an amendment to a piece of financial reform legislation. "They're still negotiating," said a spokeswoman for the congressman's office. "We're very hopeful that it's going to be included, maybe ... by the end of next week." She told WND that Paul would be pleased to have it pass as it stands. The plan, now pending before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs after being approved by the House at the close of 2009, would provide for "an audit of all actions taken by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal reserve banks during the current economic crisis…"...Link

A national ID card in 2010?.....

National identification cards, long feared by privacy advocates, may soon become mandatory for American workers. In a bipartisan effort to curb the hiring of illegal immigrants, Sens. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have proposed legislation that, if passed, will require all working Americans to carry biometric ID cards containing fingerprint records and other personal information...Link

Pelosi: Public option ‘not in reconciliation’.

If there was any lingering doubt as to whether the public option would survive the final health care motion, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) ended it on Friday morning. "We had it. We wanted it," Pelosi told reporters at a press briefing. "It's not in reconciliation... We're talking about something that is not going to be part of the legislation." While Pelosi may be the purveyor of the bad news for progressives, she's certainly not the culprit. The House of Representatives passed the provision in its November bill, but it was removed from the Senate version at the last minute...Link

The Great "Inflation or Deflation?" Debate.