Washington

WASHINGTON — The Securities and Exchange Commission has barred ex-Wachovia Securities LLC broker Guy P. Riordan from associating with any broker or dealer, and ordered him to pay a $500,000 penalty and to disgorge almost $938,354 in ill-gotten gains and interest for securities fraud violations stemming from a pay-to-play scheme involving the former treasurer of New Mexico.

WASHINGTON — The House is poised to approve a massive financial regulatory reform bill today, after considering a series of amendments late into last night.

WASHINGTON — House Democrats plan to introduce and vote next week on a jobs bill, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said yesterday as the chamber voted 221 to 202 to approve a nearly half-trillion dollar appropriations bill with funding for high-speed rail.

WASHINGTON — The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board yesterday announced 11 market participants that have joined its issuer and investor advisory groups for two-year terms that end Sept. 30, 2011.

WASHINGTON — Congress is expected as early as this week to take up a $446.8 billion appropriations act for fiscal 2010 that would provide more high-speed rail funds than the Obama administration had requested, along with highway and other transportation infrastructure funds and bond-related community development block grants.

WASHINGTON — Municipal issuers will sell an estimated $450.5 billion of long- and short-term tax-exempt debt in 2010, a 7.9% rise over the $417.5 billion estimated for 2009, while the number of taxable Build America Bonds issued in 2010 could be 50% more than this year’s total, according to a survey of broker-dealers last month compiled by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.

The House yesterday approved by a vote of 241 to 181 legislation that extends a number of expiring bond-related and other tax provisions, but it is unclear when or whether the Senate will approve similar legislation.

WASHINGTON — The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Wednesday that it has settled its civil litigation against Robert Bradbury, the former chairman and chief executive officer of the now defunct underwriting firm Dolphin & Bradbury Inc., and barred him from the securities markets.

WASHINGTON — House Financial Services Committee members and their colleagues have drafted almost 250 amendments that they would like to see added to the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009, including one that would prohibit state and local governments and public pension funds from entering into swaps.

WASHINGTON — Several small local housing finance agencies will not be participating in the new-issue bond purchase program recently rolled out by the Treasury Department. Instead, they have opted to return their allocations because high fees and the Treasury’s refusal to allow escrowed bonds to be sold at a premium make it economically infeasible for them to do the transactions.

President Obama’s announcement yesterday of his administration’s job-creation plan added momentum to the push by municipal market participants for any forthcoming jobs bill to include infrastructure spending and aid to states.

WASHINGTON — New York Liberty Bond issuers — including the Liberty Development Corp., which planned to sell $2.59 billion of the bonds this month to beat the current deadline — would have another year to put together deals under legislation introduced yesterday by the top tax writer in the House.

WASHINGTON — Cities need another dose of recovery aid from the federal government in any forthcoming jobs bill, including extensions of Build America Bonds and other bond-related stimulus programs, global credit ratings for corporate and muni bonds, and more funds for transportation and water infrastructure projects, officials told President Obama this week.

The Justice Department must release details from 300 municipal reinvestment contracts that allegedly were rigged, as well as the identities of the alleged co-conspirators involved in those transactions, to attorneys representing CDR Financial Products and three individuals named in a federal indictment in late October, a judge in New York said Friday.

WASHINGTON — Dismissing criticism from market groups, the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board has moved forward with a proposal that would require muni securities dealers, as well as their finance professionals and political action committees, to disclose most contributions they make to bond ballot election campaigns.

House and Senate leaders may soon include a six-month extension of the current transportation law in an omnibus appropriations bill, as the Dec. 18 expiration date of the latest extension approaches, sources said Friday.

WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve chairman Ben S. Bernanke yesterday cautioned lawmakers against pushing for a job-creation bill right now, saying the first federal stimulus law has not fully affected the economy and that it may be “early to do more fiscal actions.”

WASHINGTON — The Senate Finance Committee’s top Republican introduced legislation yesterday that would authorize another $2.2 billion of clean renewable energy bonds, while the House Ways and Means Committee is expected to introduce a bill next week that would extend a number of expiring tax provisions.

WASHINGTON — Large local school districts would not be forced to give up their unused qualified school construction bond allocations to states to keep them from expiring at the end of the year under legislation proposed yesterday by the top tax writers in the House.

House transportation leaders yesterday said they will push for as much as $69 billion of infrastructure grants to states to be included in any job-creation bill that is put forward and approve an extension of the current law.