Despite the objections of investor advocates, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) finalized a rule that will lift a decades-old ban on advertising by hedge funds. The original prohibition on such advertising dated back to Great Depression and protected people from investment scams.

The ink has barely dried on new rules to protect working people from predatory mortgage lenders and the big bankers’ friends in Congress are already making moves to try to roll back protections. Tomorrow, a House hearing is scheduled to consider proposals to roll back protections against predatory mortgages.

To protect consumers from the types of predatory lending that led to the housing crisis, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 included the commonsense requirement that mortgage lenders consider a borrower’s ability to repay when issuing a mortgage.

Payday lenders can trap working people in a never-ending cycle of debt. Big Banks also have gotten into the business by offering “deposit advance” loans. For years, consumer advocates have been calling on regulators to rein in abusive payday loans, which often charge interest at more than 300% per year. These exorbitantly high interest rates drain money from low-income communities.

The Masters of the Universe on Wall Street would have us believe that they have attained their exorbitant wealth because of superior intellect and work ethic. Yet, time after time, they prove to us through behavior that could generously be described as ethically challenged that, in fact, they have not become Masters of the Universe by being smarter or harder working than the rest of us.

A growing chorus of voices across the country is calling for President Obama to replace the acting director of Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), Edward J. DeMarco. DeMarco, a holdover from the Bush administration, is responsible for overseeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. President Obama’s nominee to replace him in 2010 was blocked by Republicans.

DeMarco has prohibited Fannie and Freddie from providing responsible homeowners who are struggling to keep up with their mortgages with access to principal reductions. He has even refused to allow them to participate in the Obama administration’s principal reduction program (HAMP PRA), despite FHFA analysis showing that participating in the program could save $3.6 billion for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and $1 billion for the taxpayers.

JPMorgan Chase lost more than $6 billion on a bad bet known as the “London whale” trades and then tried to conceal its losses from regulators, investors and the public, according to a report released last night and hearings held today by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

When media reports surfaced in April of last year that a JPMorgan Chase trader had “amassed positions so large that he’s driving price moves in the $10 trillion market,” JPMorgan Chase executives quickly responded by holding a call with investors and analysts.

As policymakers in the United States wrangle over how to avert the austerity bomb, the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of the financial transactions tax (FTT). The European FTT is expected to raise as much as €37 billion each year ($48 billion in U.S. dollars).

Mitt Romney’s bid for the presidency is built on the idea that his success in the leveraged buyout industry and the fabulous wealth he’s accumulated is evidence that he knows how to create jobs and foster economic growth. He argued in Tuesday night’s debate that we should just trust him when he says he can cut the deficit and cut taxes by 20% across the board because of his credentials as a leveraged buyout titan.

The problem with Romney’s argument is that the leveraged buyout business does not create jobs. The tax breaks that the industry relies on, like the discounted tax rate for capital gains and offshore tax shelters, add tens of billions of dollars each year to the deficit.

Today, The Nation is reporting on yet another example of how Romney and the shadowy private investment industry really makes its money—offshoring jobs, taxpayer subsidies and bailouts and cutting workers’ pensions.