Witness last week's land speed record for unintended consequences, as a liability provision in the Dodd-Frank financial reform brought new issues to a screeching halt in the $1.4 trillion asset-backed securities market.

With geniuses like Ohio Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy running things, who needs enemies? Oh wait, I forgot: We have a failed community organizer and closet Muslim for a President...

Kilroy Was Here, Alas

A clever little mortgage scheme in Europe foiled

Hungary has approved a ban on mortgage lending in foreign currencies. Talk about closing the barn door after the horse is gone.

The government had no problem with consumers borrowing in Swiss francs at low interest rates when CHF/HUF was at 165. Now that it is at 215, they think its a bad idea…

Hungary announced a package of reforms a short while ago, including a bank tax. A new "precautionary" deal with the IMF is their aim, the economy minister says.

The same problem extends across central Europe where homeowners "cleverly" borrowed in Swiss to avoid high local rates.

Those homeowners are now choking, helping drive the franc ever-higher. An ugly situation that never should have been allowed to happen.

NOW Hungary bans FX mortgage lending

By getting rid of limitations on leverage, Wall Street has raised the odds of another financial crisis.

The most crucial element in the re-regulation of Wall Street has been gutted. At least for now, there will be no limits on how much money Wall Street can borrow to do its business. It's an invitation to dare a new meltdown or financial crisis. The big banks' lobbyists have convinced Treasury and Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, not to support Rep Barney Frank's, D-Mass., insistence on limiting the leverage Wall Street can use to trade securities.

Treasury, Dodd Sell Out To Wall Street

How Federal Policy Triggered the Mortgage Meltdown

The best way to ensure against future bailouts is to terminate the federal government’s too-big-to-fail guarantees. That’s right: End them, don’t mend them. So long as guarantees are in place, primary lenders, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and every other mortgage industry player will continue making loans to large numbers of people unable to pay them back. Risk must be driven by market rather than political forces. Writing on the mortgage meltdown, Barron’s columnist Gene Epstein recently noted, “Crony capitalists love to take foolish risks, dependent as they are on government’s rigged markets, often to the point that they would not be able to cope with free markets if they do.”

Many political leaders, under the guise of “reform,” prefer assigning to government the role of underwriter-in-chief. Frankly, it’s hard to imagine the federal government getting much more involved than it already is...

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Congressman Waxman sneaks anti-vitamin amendment into Wall Street reform bill

(NaturalNews) Of all the sneaky tactics practiced in Washington D.C., this recent action by Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) is one of the most insidious: While no one was looking, he injected amendment language into the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009 (H.R. 4173) that would expand the powers of the FTC (not the FDA, but the FTC) to terrorize nutritional supplement companies by greatly expanding the power of the FTC to make its own laws that target dietary supplement companies.

This is a little-known secret about the FTC and the nutritional supplements business: The FTC routinely targets nutritional supplement companies that are merely telling the truth about their products. Some companies are threatened by merely linking to published scientific studies about their products.

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The Limits of Charisma: Mr. President, please stay off TV!

Unless Obama learns to rely less on charm, rhetoric, and good intentions and more on picking his spots and winning in political combat, he's not going to be reelected, let alone enshrined in South Dakota.