Washington

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats Tuesday failed for the second straight day to garner the 60 votes they needed to move forward with consideration of a massive financial regulatory reform bill by the full Senate.

A federal judge in Manhattan has refused to dismiss lawsuits four California issuers filed against Wells Fargo & Co., JPMorgan, and other banks, broker-dealers, and investment brokers, charging they conspired to rig bids and fix prices of guaranteed investment and derivatives contracts in the municipal market.

The National Association of Bond Lawyers is urging Congress to fix a number of glitches and provisions with unintended consequences that it has identified in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act enacted last February.

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department released interim guidance yesterday instructing municipal issuers how to issue four tax-credit bonds as direct-subsidy bonds, as was authorized by a jobs law enacted in March.

WASHINGTON — All 41 Senate Republicans and one Democrat voted Monday evening against limiting debate on a massive financial regulatory reform bill, depriving Democrats leadership of the 60 votes they needed to move forward with a vote the full Senate.

Four major municipal market groups yesterday urged the Treasury Department to immediately issue interim guidance on how to determine issue price for Build America Bonds, warning that confusion surrounding the topic is having a “chilling effect” on the still-developing market.

The Investment Company Institute is urging the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board to expand the proposed second phase of its transparency system for short-term debt to include more types of data and documents, while the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association is concerned that the expansion would be unduly onerous for dealers.

New-issue prices for Build America Bonds remain a hot topic among municipal market participants, as several market groups last week were weighing asking the Treasury Department for clarification on the subject.

This chart includes legislation introduced in the 111th Congress, which convened in January and extends through the end of 2010.

WASHINGTON — The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority announced yesterday that it has fined HSBC Securities Inc. $1.5 million and U.S. Bancorp Investments Inc. $275,000 to settle sales-practice violations for municipal and other auction-rate securities the firms sold to retail customers.

WASHINGTON — When President Obama last spoke at New York’s Cooper Union as a presidential candidate two years ago, he called for an overhaul of the “balkanized” regulatory system for the financial markets and blamed the credit crisis on Washington lobbyists and politicians who engineered deregulation in the late 1990s.

WASHINGTON — Critics of a new nuclear loan guarantee program warned a House Oversight Committee panel this week that it would subsidize too-risky investments, while backers claimed the program is critical to nuclear development.

WASHINGTON — The Senate Agriculture Committee’s passage yesterday of a bill to regulate over-the-counter derivatives and impose a fiduciary duty on swap dealers for muni issuers drew polarized reactions yesterday. Dealer representatives warned that it would kill the muni derivatives market while a former regulator applauded the provision and called for lawmakers to go even further.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is seeking to intervene and temporarily halt fact-finding by a group of localities in their class action suit against Wells Fargo & Co. and 15 other banks, broker-dealers and investment brokers for allegedly conspiring to rig bids and fix prices of investment and derivatives contracts in the municipal market.

CHICAGO — Several Midwestern recipients of portions of the $8 billion in federal stimulus funds earmarked for high-speed rail lobbied for more funding to promote overall rail use and defended their projects’ lack of speed against Republican criticism during a congressional field hearing here Tuesday.

The Internal Revenue Service is auditing $445 million of industrial development revenue refunding bonds issued by Campbell County, Wyo., in 2007 in connection with a waste-coal power plant now set to be completed in 2013, five years later than originally proposed.

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board is seeking public comment on draft interpretive guidance it released yesterday that outlines steps dealers must take to ensure the prices they charge customers to buy and sell municipal securities are fair and reasonable.

BRADENTON, Fla. — The Securities and Exchange Commission has opened an investigation into an $83.3 million bond deal that Miami-Dade County sold last year on behalf of the county’s financially ailing Public Health Trust.

WASHINGTON — Senate Agriculture Committee chairman Blanche Lincoln and other Democrats contend it’s necessary to impose a fiduciary duty on dealers that act as swap ­counterparties to state and local governments because some of them have misled municipalities into entering swaps they didn’t understand.

WASHINGTON — Rep. Anna Eshoo will soon introduce legislation requiring the Treasury Department to use some of the profits it obtains from the sale of troubled assets under the TARP program to provide relief to local governments that lost money from the September 2008 Lehman Brothers collapse.