Congress

The Obama administration pressed the US Congress this week to pass a proper legislation to protect consumers’ data and safeguard the nation's financial system and electric power grid from potentially devastating cyber-attacks.

Over the past year Congress rejected several cybersecurity bills while big companies such as Nasdaq OMX Group and Sony Corp suffered high-profile hacker attacks.

Barack Obama and leaders from both parties in Congress face a new chain of disputes and fights over the US budget as the state has escaped a potential government shutdown.

As Obama is to offer a long-term plan for deficit reduction on Wednesday, the White House and Congress start fighting over the 2012 fiscal year budget and raising the $14.3 trillion limit on government borrowing authority.

The fights are expected to dominate the political agenda overshadowing Friday's 11th-hour deal to cut $38 billion in spending for the final six months of this fiscal year.

Yesterday Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke has made a statement in Providence, R.I. calling on Congress to work over the new rules that will rein in budget deficits. “For now, the budget deficit has stabilized and, so long as the economy and financial markets continue to recover, it should narrow relative to national income over the next few years. Economic conditions provide little scope for reducing deficits significantly further over the next year or two; indeed, premature fiscal tightening could put the recovery at risk,” said Bernanke.

The Congressional Oversight Panel said that the United States helped many foreign banks when pouring huge amounts of money into its economy. It noted that bailing out ailing financial firms during the 2007-09 crisis helped many foreign banks whose governments should have shared some of the burden.

According to Ben Bernanke, who claims US economic forecast to be “unusually uncertain", the Federal Reserve stands ready to ease monetary policy further if the budding US economic recovery wanes.  

According to new analytics estimations, enormous amount of Americans are expected to lose unemployment benefits by the end of July. Thus far, over 3 million US unemployed people could be left without their benefits even as the government spends record amounts to compensate the jobless. 

The financial reform bill that’s been moving toward a final vote in Congress has cast light on the relationship between consumers, paying by credit card, debit card or cash, and retailers. 

A Treasury Department report to the US Congress reveals that the US debt will reach $13.6 trillion this year and climb to an estimated $19.6 trillion by 2015. The report was sent to the Congress last week indicating that the ratio of debt to the gross domestic product would rise to 102 percent by 2015 from 93 percent this year.

In light of the forthcoming elections in November members of the US Congress are actively considering policies to cut the double-digit unemployment rate as they themselves may lose their posts. With the jobless percentage highest in 25 years job creation becomes the main focus of Democrats.

"Americans have a lot of angst, a lot of anger, a lot of fear," said House Democratic leader Steny Hoyer. "Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican or an independent, all polls show that jobs are the major issue."

Two blocks from the Treasury, where the government not long ago scrambled to save a collapsing financial system, a team of investigators armed with subpoena powers is preparing the official narrative of the crisis and what went wrong.

As Washington focuses on Congress' regulatory response to the 2008 Wall Street meltdown, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that Congress created last spring has been an afterthought.

Until now.

According to the Federal Trade Commission’s survey issued Thursday, even savvy youngster can figure out how to access violent or explicitly sexual content in some in Internet.

 The research of variety of online worlds, where users create avatars and interact with other users' avatars, found 7 of the worlds with the most explicit sex and violence set a minimum age of 13 and 8 set a minimum age of 18. Kids under 13 attempted to register, will be rejected at five of the sites.

Several U.S. policy makers consider JPMorgan Chase & Co Chief Executive Jamie Dimon as a potential successor to U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the New York Post said, citing sources.

 Dimon "would love to serve his country," the paper quoted people familiar with his thinking as saying.

The Federal Reserve's low interest rate policy is meant to encourage investors to move into riskier assets in order to promote economic recovery, and there are no signs currently the policy is resulting in the build-up of a U.S. asset bubble, the central bank's number-two official said on Monday.

 Last week two dozens names of the U.S. House of Representatives who are being scrutinized for conduct violations leaked on a peer-to-peer network and were widely distributed over the Internet.

On Thursday last week the Washington Post reported that it had obtained a document with the names of dozens of House members who are being probed by ethics investigators for activities related to defense lobbying and influence peddling. The document was made up by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, which is also called the Ethics Committee, in July.

 The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation official stated Wednesday that to help law enforcement agencies fight the growth of cybercrime a U.S. law that would require businesses to report data breaches to potential victims is necessary. Jeffrey Troy, chief of the FBI's Cyber Criminal Section said during a cybersecurity discussion in Washington, D.C. that using the information about the data breaches of U.S. businesses, law enforcement agencies could link those attacks to others and potentially stop similar attacks at other organizations.