Obama administration

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.

The Supreme Court was asked by the Obama administration to address the issue among federal appellate courts over the necessity to get a warrant before attaching a GPS device to a suspect's vehicle to track their location. In fact, the Justice Department said that a person traveling on public roads has "no reasonable expectation of privacy" in his movements, even if 'scientific enhancements' are used to help law enforcement with the tracking.

After the reports that the Obama administration might impose more than $100 billion charge on banks the stocks in the sector dropped sharply. Major U.S. banks' stock prices saw deeper declines than their regional bank counterparts.

The Obama administration is considering charging the nation's largest banks more than $100 billion to recoup losses from the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

"That's a really big number for the banking industry, particularly the biggest banks, to swallow," said Jefferson Harralson, a Keefe, Bruyette and Woods Inc analyst.

The projected long-term cost of the US government's bailout of the nation's big banks is going to be at least $200 billion less than previously thought, a Treasury Department official said on Sunday night.

The Obama administration had estimated the cost to taxpayers of the $700-billion Troubled Asset relief Program, or TARP, would be $341 billion but now says it can cut that by $200 billion.

According to the Wall Street Journal Sunday report, five AIG’s senior executives unveiled last week they may quit if their compensation was reduced significantly by Kenneth Feinberg.

 They indicated December 1, in written notices, that they were prepared to leave by year-end. However, two of them changed their minds over the weekend.

 AIG, which was propped up by the government with some $180 billion in taxpayer funds, has been sparring with the Obama administration's pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg, over executive compensation.

 The Obama administration's executive pay czar said his authority should not be expanded beyond setting compensation guidelines for seven banks and automakers that have received extraordinary taxpayer bailouts.

Kenneth Feinberg, the U.S. Treasury bailout program's special master for compensation, told lawmakers in prepared testimony scheduled for delivery on Wednesday that his authority should remain limited to the firms specified by the Treasury.

 Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan predicted on Sunday that the jobless rate will pass 10 percent and stay there for a while, and a second stimulus plan is not needed now.

The Obama administration called for an end to unjust credit card industry practices such as retroactive interest rate increases for any reason, late-fee traps that penalize borrowers with weekend or middle-of-the-day deadlines and teaser rates that last less than six months. The Treasury Department released a written statement where the administration outlined practices it would like Congress to reform.