In response to the directive, Sinochem is holding meetings with several banks, the source said Friday, including Citigroup, HSBC and Morgan Stanley.

The order in Beijing underlines the seriousness with which China takes the potential of BHP-tie Potash and its implications for pricing and supply of crop nutrients, despite the obstacles to launching a successful bid-cons.

“They were instructed,” the source said, adding that the decision was made last week. “The president of Sinochem has been asked to speak to other banks.”

A Wall Street Journal said Thursday Sinochem had hired HSBC to advise it on options for Potash Corp.

One option being discussed is the possibility of links with Sinochem China $ 300 billion sovereign fund CIC, according to a second banking source familiar with the matter.

The most likely scenario is that China will consider buying a blocking minority, rather than attempting a complete takeover of Potash Corp, said two sources who were not authorized to speak publicly due of the sensitive nature of discussions.

Assuming a consortium pays a premium of 20 per cent in the potash market, a 15 percent cost about $ 8.3 billion.

Sinochem and the banks declined comment. CIC could not be reached immediately.

Marius Kloppers BHP CEO has poured cold water on the possibility of a competing offer, but another source close to the situation in Europe, said the latest developments are evidence of the strong interest in Potash Corp. by others.

“This shows there is the credibility of Potash Corp., is not just hot air. This is not just a defense go-it-alone. There is much activity in terms of discussions “said the source.

Chinese companies have also made at least one large Canadian pension manager on a competing offer. The disclosure Thursday by Alberta Investment Management Corp., which manages about C $ 70 billion (67 billion dollars) in public pension funds, was one of the first pieces of evidence to support rumors that China is looking for a way to derail a takeover bid by BHP.

Potash went to New York closed down 5 cents at $ 148.50, while BHP shares in London ended the day up 1.8 percent.

BHP’s bid for Potash Corp., coupled with movement of consolidation in the sector of potash from Russia, have also caused concern among importers of potash others.

U.S. Awasthi, head of the manufacturer of India’s largest fertilizer IFFCO has also expressed concerns about the M & A activity in the area of potash.

“Everybody forgets one thing, Awasthi said.” Everybody thinks about industrial profit, but everyone forgets the benefit of a farmer. ”

India, one of the importers of the world’s largest potash, has no production capacity of its own and depends on imports. In 2008, India imported about 6 million tons of nutrients, with about one quarter of its needs being supplied by domestic producers.

Earlier this year, IFFCO has acquired a 10 per cent in Calgary, Americas Petrogas and a 20 per cent in its GrowMax unit, which has a proposed potash brine under development in Peru. However, India is unlikely to attempt a coup to block the takeover bid by BHP.

“In India we do not have enough capital in our hands to make a large movement of this kind,” he said.

The results topped most expectations on Wall Street, but forecast Campbell scared many investors, and its shares slipped 3 percent Friday.

The Camden company said its fourth quarter net income rose 63 percent from the same period last year to 113 million, or 33 cents per share. Excluding non-recurring items from 2009 results, the increase was 7 percent.

The company recorded production numbers better and benefited from lower taxes, but sales declined slightly compared to the same period last year, from 1.53 billion to $ 1.52 billion dollars for the quarter. For the full year, they fell 1 percent to 7.6 billion from $ 7.7 billion.

During the quarter, sales of ready-to-serve and condensed soups slipped 7 percent.

The company said that sales figures for the fourth quarter not enough to talk to the health of the company.

But his activity has weakened soup all year, and sales are not expected to rebound strongly soon. Sales in the category fell 4.7 percent. Campbell’s expensive ready-to-use lines like Chunky Soup were the hardest hit, with sales down 9 percent for fiscal 2010. The decline in full year after seven years of consecutive growth.

Campbell is increasingly focused on consumer saving. President and CEO Douglas Conant reiterated a conference call with analysts Friday that the company has put a priority on increasing its sales of condensed soup.

“I see that consumers are very aware of values, and competition in our industry remain very strong,” he said.

Campbell is now forecasting sales growth for 2011 of 2 to 3 per cent – just below its long-term.

The company says there is more room to reduce costs. It is expected its earnings per share will increase by 5 percent to 7 percent.

“Campbell is setting up a frenzy of updating and, if it works, we believe that the stock” place Jonathan Feeney, an analyst at Janney, wrote in a note Friday.

The company has strengthened margins in a difficult environment and there were some bright spots.

When a gain of $ 14 million in commodity hedging was withdrawn last year, the company’s gross margin was 40.6 percent, compared to 40.4 percent during the same period in 2009.

Beverage sales were strong, including the V8 vegetable juice, which rose 12 percent. With so many meals to be prepared at home, sales rose 9 percent of stock.

For the full year, Campbell reported earnings of $ 844 million, or $ 2.42 per share, up $ 736 million or $ 2.05 per share for fiscal 2009. Excluding non-recurring items, the annual profit was $ 862 million, or $ 2.47 per share, up $ 794 million or $ 2.21 per share.

Campbell stock slipped $ 1.11, or 3 percent, to $ 36.21.

The deal could be expanded to 74 billion dollars if there was a strong demand, the company run by the state said.

Cash is the heart of an ambitious plan Petrobras has already pointed to boost capital spending over the next five years to $ 224 billion as it seeks to exploit the potentially vast oil reserves discovered recently off the coast of Rio de Janeiro.

The target 64-billion offer for new shares representing a 40 percent stake in the company, which Thursday was estimated at 150 billion dollars.

Petrobras’ share price rose nearly five per cent over the market in Sao Paulo after the announcement, which confirms the confidence of investors in the issue and the prospects of Brazil in general.

Analysts forecast that the market might balk at the price high Petrobras has agreed to pay the government for new oil reserves in a transaction for sharing seemed confused, at least initially.

The offer would see 2.1 million common shares and 1.5 million preferred shares issued, the company said in a statement. The price of new shares will be given Sept. 23.

Existing shareholders – including the government – will have access first to the majority of shares.

Petrobras estimates offshore called subsalt fields could more than triple its existing proven oil reserves of 14 billion barrels, catapulting Brazil into the forefront of OPEC. Brazil is not a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

But to get to the black, Petrobras will have to overcome a series of expensive technological challenges unprecedented in the oil industry. The company, world leader in oil exploration in deep waters, is confident he will be able to do so.

Petrobras said in June its daily production is 2.5 million barrels per day. It also announced it had discovered a new reserve of light crude in the deep waters off the coast, estimated at 380 million barrels.

The government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has changed the laws governing the petroleum sector in Brazil and to promote greater participation in the State Petrobras to secure sovereign rights over what appears to be a windfall.

The government Wednesday agreed to exchange five billion barrels of oil in areas newly discovered subsalt $ 42 billion more shares of Petrobras.

It has participation from 39 percent in-group: 32 percent and another one hundred and seven directly to indirectly, through its investment bank BNDES state.

Analysts said the money raised for the capital increase should be carefully managed to avoid having to return Petrobras markets in the short-term increase further. The company is already as extended as it can be in terms of credit rating without risking his blue chips.

Adriano Pires, an expert in the oil sector in the Brazilian Centre for Infrastructure, told AFP the issue of shares was only to cover investment in areas already allocated to the operation.

Additional funds will be required for reservations, more recently discovered – or if billions are spent unwisely raised, “he said.

“As the (Petrobras) is very politicized management, I am afraid that the money raised from the market could be burned through quickly. Because politicized management creates enormous economic distortions,” he said.

Another analyst, Tereza Fernandes of MB Asociados consulting firm, predicts the share offering would be a success, but doubts could then occur on the rates of return for investors and shareholder value Petrobras.

“Obviously a lot depends on the price of a barrel of oil on the international market,” she said.

This war has been going on for decades — but democracy hasn’t always been in full retreat.

The New Deal Conquest: During the Great Depression democratic forces gained the upper hand in the war. We realized that financial markets, which are driven by the largest banks and financiers, had to be tightly controlled. We knew that global speculation on currencies only deepened the Depression and had to be strictly limited. We knew that an iron curtain was needed between commercial and investment banking to protect Main Street depositors from market madness (that was the Glass-Steagall Act). And most importantly we knew that the key to preventing economic upheaval was to limit the wealth of the super-rich and to increase the wealth of working people through progressive taxes, Social Security, wage and hour laws, and the promotion of unionization. The Bretton Woods agreements forged by the Allies during WWII set up strict rules for global finance, rules that kept financiers in check for more than a quarter century.

And it worked pretty damn well. As economist Joseph Stiglitz points out, this era saw only one financial crisis (Brazil, 1964), and working people in western democracies made huge gains. Since the era of deregulation took hold in the late 1970s, the world has suffered over a hundred financial crises and middle-class incomes have stagnated.

The Deregulatory Counter-Offensive: By the late 1970s, bankers regained the advantage through the spread of a new faith in self-regulated markets. The economic apostles of unfettered markets lobbied against progressive taxes, unions, and social welfare programs. The new orthodoxy was: Let the elites collect the money–they’ll invest wisely (instead of consuming), and all boats will rise. This near-religious revolution rapidly spread through the economic and policy establishment. Regulations were dismantled right and left, and the revolving door between government and Wall Street started spinning. The American financial catechism ruled the world. And on Wall Street, the money tap was open. It did not trickle down.

Then, suddenly, in 2008, the market gods destroyed themselves as the unregulated financial casinos crashed and burned, just like they did in 1929. For a few months, it seemed like the deregulatory theology become a global heresy. It was obvious that Wall Street’s reckless speculation and its bold new wave of financial engineering had caused the Great Recession. (See The Looting of America for an accessible account.). It was also clear that if government didn’t come to the rescue, Wall Street would lay in ruins, along with the rest of the economy. This was the perfect moment for democracy reassert democratic control on financial markets, just as we did during the New Deal. We blew it.

The Victory at Too Big to Fail: At the moment when Wall Street was on its knees, we decided to bypass serious reform. Instead, we rebuilt Wall Street, using taxpayer money and guarantees – more than $10 trillion worth. We let bankers use our bailout money to pay themselves $150 billion in bonuses — at a moment when over 29 million Americans were jobless or forced into part-time jobs. We allowed the top hedge fund managers to walk off with over $900,000 an hour (not a typo) in 2009. Windfall profits taxes? No. In fact we let hedge fund honchos pay an extra-low tax rate by calling their income “capital gains.” We didn’t restore Glass-Steagall, we didn’t break up “too big to fail” financial institutions. In fact the biggest banks became even bigger, courtesy of the U.S. government.

The Invasion against Democracy: The war is escalating. Right now, financial elites aren’t just fighting a defensive battle against new regulations. They’re playing offense: They’re whipping up deficit hysteria around the globe and calling for drastic cuts in middle class programs. Why? They want to ensure that their loans to governments aren’t threatened by rising public debt. Ironically, the public debt they’re so worried about was created in large part by them — the result of huge bailouts and other expenses stemming from the crash they caused. Although the bankers want us to dismantle what remains of our worker-oriented policies, welfare for the financial elites is still fine and dandy.

This is the most dangerous counter attack in the history of finance. We had better know a great deal more about the attackers. Who makes up this shadowy force called “global markets”? Who fights their battles? Do they have a high command?

Not really. There is no executive committee of financial elites. There’s no international conspiracy, no Elders of Zion. Instead these markets are pulled and pushed by about 50 very large banks and financial institutions. This is where much of the nation’s $2 trillion in hedge fund money roams. This is where the top six US banks frolic. They don’t have to sit around a table strategizing. They instantly sense threats to their power. They instantly smell profitable openings and they’re poised to grab what they can, whenever they can. They thrive on turmoil, which gives them new “proprietary” trading opportunities to exploit. Volatility means big bucks, especially now that the largest players know that the government will back up even their wildest gambles. History has just proven that they are way too big to fail.

Of course they still have to lobby government officials–many of whom either were bankers, or will be once they leave office. But their most powerful lever on government is through the market itself: Here, by moving vast quantities of money around, they can instantly veto policies they don’t like. If the EU talks seriously about financial transaction taxes, the markets go down the Euro grows weaker, and interest rates rise–making it more expensive for governments to borrow the money they need to operate. Politicians have learned to “listen” to the markets and are conditioned to placate them.

Should a nation state get out of line (Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, etc), the markets slap them silly. Politicians rush to the scene and start slicing social spending. If instead they demand new taxes on financial elites to reduce public debt, the markets respond with even more fury. Money flees.

All the external machinery of democracy still clanks along. We still pull the levers in the voting booth. But the decisions that affect us the most are made in a profoundly undemocratic way. Faceless financial markets exercise far more control over politicians than the voters who elected them.

So the problem isn’t just the corporate campaign contributions, or corporate media control or the academic consensus supporting our financial theocracy. It’s the raw power of the markets. They’ve been roaming free and virtually unregulated for more than a generation, and now their power is unparalleled. Just months after they brought our economy crashing down, they’re right back to their old tricks, setting the stage for the next crash and the next bailout while getting filthy rich along the way.

Bill Clinton nailed it on the head when he reportedly said:

“You mean to tell me that the success of the economic program and my reelection hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of fxxxing bond traders?” (See Agenda by Bob Woodward)

No Retreat, No Surrender? There’s no room for pacifists in this war. Clearly, Wall Street and its global minions are not seeking a truce. Instead, they’re coming after our Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid programs. They want us to work longer before we retire and get less when we do. They want us to pay more for health care and get less of it. They want less public money to go to schools, teachers and public infrastructures. And they want us to get used to a jobless recovery with double digit unemployment rates. (And when millions and millions of people are unemployed, we can’t maintain high labor standards, and our wages and benefits erode.) In short, they want to undermine all the policies and programs that have built and sustained middle class life.

Already government officials in the UK, Germany and here are telling us we must endure austerity for “decades to come.” As Fed Chair Ben Bernanke candidly put it:

“We can see what problems can arise in a country if investors lose confidence in the fiscal position of that country, so it is very important that we address this problem.”

Of course, he’s not going to point out that this austerity is only for the masses, definitely not for the financial elites. Or that the underlying cause of the debt investors are so worried about is the giant economic crater caused by the very same financial elites who now might “lose confidence” in financing a middle class society.

We shouldn’t kid ourselves about the pitched battles ahead. Fighting back won’t be easy, and winning will be even harder. People in country after country will have to mobilize themselves in defense of real democracy, in defense of each nation’s right to provide its people with a decent quality of life. In my opinion, that includes sustainable jobs with decent benefits and a solid public infrastructure that promotes equity, protects the vulnerable and enriches the environment.

Unfortunately, no one can guarantee that democracy will prevail in the war against financial theocracy — just recall the totalitarian chaos in Europe during the Great Depression. But don’t count it out, either. It’s true that many of us regular folks have been diverted by the media, distracted by the Internet or lulled into a stupor by pharmaceuticals. But when we realize that we’ve been shoved into a corner with no way out, we’ll act. A popular struggle will begin. And when it does, we’ll at least have a fighting chance to recapture our democratic souls.

Les Leopold is the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street’s Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009.

Les Leopold: Is there a Global War Between Financial Theocracy and Democracy? via

While Japan is on firmer financial footing than Greece because most of its debt is held domestically, Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s blunt talk appeared designed to push forward his agenda, which may involve raising taxes.

Speaking in his first address to Parliament after taking office Tuesday, Kan said Japan cannot continue to let government debt swell while state finances are under pressure from an aging and declining population.

“It is difficult to sustain a policy that relies too heavily on issuing debt. As we have seen with the financial confusion in the European community stemming from Greece, our finances could collapse if trust in national bonds is lost and growing national debt is left alone,” he said.

Japan, the world’s second-largest economy, has the largest public debt among industrialized nations at 218.6 percent of its gross domestic product in 2009, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Kan, who became Japan’s sixth prime minister in four years after a short stint as finance minister, promised his government would work closely with the Bank of Japan to avoid an increase in deflation and would focus on developing a “strong and comprehensive” policy.

Kan has said he will also consider raising taxes, an issue he said previous governments had been too timid to face. A social progressive and a fiscal hawk, Kan said he would announce further details of his economic growth plan later this month.

But he said he aims to have the economy grow by more than 2 percent annually by fiscal 2020.

After amassing a vast public debt and overspending to the tune of 13.6 percent of gross domestic product in 2009, Greece was saved from defaulting on its loans by the first installment of a euro110 billion ($131 billion) rescue package from the International Monetary Fund and the 15 other nations that share the euro currency.

Analysts said Kan’s warning comparison with the recent development in Greece is an overstatement, since the Japanese investors who hold the majority of the government’s debt are seen as long-term stakeholders who are less likely to bolt for other, more lucrative markets overseas.

“Greece had a huge public debt and huge overseas loans,” said Hiromichi Shirakawa, chief economist at Credit Suisse Japan. “Japan has a trade surplus, and it’s a major creditor nation … I don’t think Japan’s fiscal conditions is facing a similar crisis.”

Instead of focusing too much on fiscal tightening, Kan should simply focus on growth strategy that works for Japan’s matured economy as the nation’s population continues to age and shrink, he added.

Kan’s predecessor abruptly quit last week after he failed to keep a campaign promise to move the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma off the southern island of Okinawa.

Kan is enjoying a jolt of public support, with approval ratings of between 60 and 70 percent boding well for his party heading into next month’s elections.

His Democratic Party is considering a July 11 date for the polls, but that has caused a row with their coalition partner and prompted its leader to announce in the early hours Friday his resignation from a Cabinet post. The junior coalition party wants instead to extend the current parliamentary session to vote on a key postal reform bill.

PM Naoto Kan: Japan’s Debt Could Make It The Next Greece via

Delta said the children were connecting through Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Tuesday when they were put on the wrong connecting flights because of a “paperwork swap.”

Delta spokesman Paul Skrbec on Wednesday said a boy ended up in Cleveland instead of Boston while a girl was sent to Boston instead of Cleveland. He would not release information about the children, citing passenger privacy.

WHDH-TV in Boston identified one of the children as 9-year-old Kieren Kershaw, who was flying alone from Spokane, Wash., to Boston to visit his grandparents when his paperwork was switched with the girl’s paperwork during the Minneapolis layover. The girl also was traveling alone.

“It was just weird. I was like, ‘I’m supposed to be at Boston, not Cleveland.’ It was just weird,” Kieren told the station after eventually landing in Boston.

Kieren said employees apologized to him when he was in Cleveland.

“‘Sorry for leaving you here when you’re really supposed to be in Boston,’” the boy quoted employees telling him. “It was kind of nice. They gave me some free food and some Dunkin’ Donuts.”

Kieren’s grandfather, Larry Kershaw, criticized Delta.

“We’re paying them to check on him and be with him. They just threw him in the plane like anybody else, they didn’t even ask his name to match the paperwork,” Kershaw told WHDH.

“Not only that, there’s another child, a little girl, that came to Boston. We don’t even know who she was. So you mean to tell me you mixed up a boy and a girl and the paperwork?” he said.

Larry Kershaw did not return a phone message left at his Massachusetts home.

Skrbec said he didn’t have details about how the mix-up happened and said it was under investigation. Delta said the two children were under airline supervision at all times.

“The situation itself is exceedingly rare, and we take it very seriously,” Skrbec said. He wasn’t able to give any numbers on how frequently such incidents happen.

Delta’s policy for children traveling alone requires unaccompanied service for all children ages 5-14 when they are not traveling in the same compartment with an adult at least 18 years old or the child’s parent or legal guardian. Under the rules, an unaccompanied child cannot be booked on the last connecting flight of the evening, to prevent the need for an overnight hotel stay. The policy also sets several identification requirements for the child and for the adults dropping off or picking up.

Delta said it has apologized to the families, sent the children to their final destinations at no cost, arranged full refunds for the children’s tickets and provided credits to the families for future travel.

___

Online:

http://www.delta.com

Delta Puts Kids On WRONG Flight, Issues Apology via

I have had this concern from the beginning that the interests of BP and those of the president are decidedly different.

BP has a responsibility to its stockholders. Already beaten down by the drop in stock value, will the stockholders now demand that BP seek the protection of bankruptcy? Will the giant oil company resort to this measure as a way of meeting its fiduciary responsibility?

That’s a great question. Can the government of the United States do anything about it? That’s another one.

Whatever the president can do to protect the interests of BP’s American victims should be number one on his agenda.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Chris Matthews: A Dead-Serious Thought on BP via

Generally even PMC supporters agree with critics that existing laws need to be at least tweaked. May will go further, arguing that new entirely new laws need to be enacted.

But the orthodoxy is wrong, according to Scott M. Sullivan, an Assistant Professor of Law at the Louisiana State University Law Center.

It bears noting that Prof. Sullivan is a member of PRIV-WAR , an E.U.-commissioned research consortium assessing the impact of the increasing use of private military companies and security companies in armed conflict. PRIV-WAR has done some of the most detailed and intriguing legal analyses of the subject in recent years.

He argues in an article “Private Force/Public Goods” he wrote for the Connecticut Law Journal, published this past February, that:

Contrary to academic and mainstream conventional wisdom, this Article concludes that national security privatization comports well with core constitutional and democratic principles and offers greater transparency and democratic control than commonly understood. Moreover, this Article argues that the American use of privatized force reflects and accomplishes normative and democratic commitments of international and domestic law that would be impossible to replicate through other policy avenues.

Prof. Sullivan believes that “conceptions of public policy efficacy must be viewed relative to the accepted special requirements and limitations of national security policy, specifically lessened public visibility of government action and public intolerance for avoidable dangers. Similarly, a genuine assessment of the danger of private actors has to operate against a baseline of their available alternatives. Combining these concerns enables the movement toward a legal regime that can assure that the privatization of national security functions safeguards rather than corrupts other core public law values associated with American national security prerogatives.”

His article contains viewpoints not found in the average law journal article. For example, he writes that most claims against privatization either prove too much (asserting that harms under their own terms not limited to the private sector) or too little (that harms are easily remedied through standard regulation). As a result, the prevailing critiques fail to address the fundamental structural question of privatizing and outsourcing force.

Somewhat amusingly it turns out that lawyers are more like us ordinary folks than we commonly assume. By that I mean they are just as prone to make gross generalization and indulge in puerile polemics. He notes, “The current legal doctrine on national security privatization presents a void that lends itself to manipulative characterization by opponents and proponents of privatization alike.”

He also examines contemporary privatization practice alongside the chief normative claims made against it. Using empirical studies and comparative analysis, he argues that the perceived harms of private military companies (“PMCs”) are overblown. Instead, the institutional structure and commercial characteristics of PMCs reflect little difference from the values reflected in public troops. PMCs, in fact, exhibit characteristics meaningfully associated with proclivity toward legal and regulatory compliance.

Ignore that background noise. That’s just the sound of various PMC legal counsels shouting Hallelujah! But Sullivan has a point. Contrary to popular wisdom most PMCs crave to comply with legal and regulatory standards. The problem is that government itself often doesn’t know what those standards are.

Furthermore, much of the contemporary criticism of PMC rests on the assumption that there is a bright shining line between private and public sector activities. People have long assumed that everything lumped into the “national security” category should be deemed “inherently governmental” and thus unsuitable for privatization or outsourcing Putting aside for the moment that even the government itself does not know how to define “inherently governmental” the actual history is more complex.

Privatization and outsourcing have saturated U.S. national security since the Eisenhower administration. The formation of NASA in 1958 introduced the federal government’s first agency in which full-time private contractors ultimately outnumbered federal employees. The same decade also witnessed private contractors building the country’s first long-range ballistic missiles and designing high-tech military aircraft. Private contractors have manned and operated U.S. nuclear missile silos since their inception.

In the 1960s, the military hired private contractors to train South Vietnamese troops prior to U.S. entrance in the Vietnam War. In 1972, private contractors held thirty-six percent of all defense-related jobs. By 2000, that number had risen to fifty percent.

One 1996 study concluded that every Department of Defense civil servant was outnumbered by five private contract and grant jobs.

I did find some of Sullivan’s points arguable; such as his belief that “Private intelligence contractors often possess more experience in interrogation than their military counterparts” — something that was very much not the case in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal – or “the military is the most carefully reviewed agency of the federal government as a formal matter.” But many of his other arguments seem credible.

His conclusion is simple.

The arguments that the privatization of national security represents serious constitutional and democratic harms are overblown. The core concern of privatization opponents rests upon a foundation that national security, the quintessential public good, cannot survive the taint of profit motive among those responsible for its delivery. The reality is quite different.

David Isenberg: The Constitutionally Compatible PMC via

If we’re not careful, our hard work and victories to this point could all be undone. Conversely, banking reform presents a real opportunity to show how business in Washington has changed. President Obama and his administration have been steadfast in fighting for good financial reform policies and a new system that has consumers in mind — all consumers, not simply those who invest large sums of money. The new law would, for instance, include a new federal agency entirely devoted to defending consumers against abusive financial products.

Representative Gutierrez (D-IL, 4th) and Senator Menendez (D-NJ) spearheaded the expansion of the Financial Education and Counseling program that provides free financial advice to families. This legislation also includes new protections against industry players that steer families into predatory mortgages, championed by Representative Watt (D-NC, 12th) and Senator Reed (D-RI).

Representative Waters (D-CA, 35th) also secured substantial funding to aid unemployed homeowners and stabilize neighborhoods hard hit by the great recession. As an illustration of the law’s inclusiveness, Representative Gutierrez and Senator Akaka (D-HI) established disclosures that create a more transparent process for wiring money abroad.

As the bill is finalized, and industry pressure for backroom deals intensifies, we will need our champions to work harder to hold the line. Banking reform must:

• Establish a new agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), dedicated to tracking emerging trends of financial abuse and enforcing consumer protection laws.
• Stop auto dealers in their search for a loophole or the means to escape accountability to the public and consumers.
• Provide expanded access to independent financial advice so that families will receive real-time guidance on how to get back on their feet financially.
• Promote access to safe and affordable bank accounts and credit, rather than fringe financial products, for low-income, minority, and underbanked families.
• Include new disclosures that would display the true cost of remittances and their received value.

The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) will continue to monitor these and other priorities throughout the process. We are encouraged by the leadership that the president has shown on this issue and the hard work of our champions in Congress. Now is the time to be steadfast and unrelenting–how you finish now matters more than how well you fought.

Eric Rodriguez: Leadership’s Finest Hour via

Yet the basic idea that we should cut greenhouse gas emissions — and do so in a way that has been road-tested in the real world — still seems to me to be a very good idea.

Now the environmental community is getting slammed for ever being in the same room with BP. Recent stories in The Economist and The Washington Post raised questions about BP’s past work with EDF and other environmental groups. But EDF or others aren’t pulling their punches, and have been vocal critics of BP’s response in the Gulf.

The horror of the BP oil disaster is the scope and impact that it’s having on the Gulf coast. Yet Fortune 500 companies, precisely because of their large scope and impact, can also use their leverage for good. EDF, for example, works with Walmart. The retail giant is hardly a darling among Progressives, but it provides unparalleled leverage in the consumer goods supply chain. If Walmart adopts higher environmental standards for product design and packaging, say, then those standards very quickly change operations at hundreds of thousands of factories around the world.

Here’s another way to think of it. If I can convince one Walmart buyer to “go green” in his or her purchasing, it has the same impact as convincing the 200 million people who shop at Walmart to do the same thing.

At EDF, we don’t help companies comply with environmental laws — they own that responsibility, and they should be held fully accountable for their actions. And we don’t take money from the companies we work with. Instead, we challenge them to create new environmental innovations, to share the results, and to forge progress even where laws and regulations don’t yet exist.

Do we need environmental groups to confront big corporations, question their claims and scrutinize their actions? Absolutely. No company should be given a free pass in today’s transparent society. But environmental groups must also engage companies, when we can, to apply their corporate clout in service to the environment. And that means that occasionally environmental groups will work with big corporate players. In both these roles–critic and collaborator–the environment is our only client.

Gwen Ruta: Strained Bedfellows: Why Environmentalists Work with Big Corporations, Even BP via