The forces trying to instill some rollback of the power of the financial elites suffered two defeats yesterday. First, Bernie Sanders’ amendment to bring more scrutiny to the Fed was watered down. Where did the pressure come from to let the Fed continue to operate in the same way it did before the crisis–a crisis the Fed helped foster?:

At least half a dozen Obama administration officials joined the blitz, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner—a former Fed official—and Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff. Administration aides credited Mr. Dodd with pushing back against the original amendment and developing an acceptable alternative.

New York Fed President William Dudley also advocated to scale back the scope of the auditing. He was among those arguing that ongoing reviews of the Fed’s regular lending to financial institutions would stigmatize the program and cripple the Fed’s role as the nation’s lender of last resort.

  Sherrod Brown also lead an effort to put some caps on the size of financial institutions. His effort was defeated because almost half of his own party sided with the Republicans, protecting the bloated size of an industry that should be cut back:

The Senate beat back another amendment with populist tinges, defeating 61-33 a provision that would have put strict caps on the size of the nation’s banks. Offered by a bloc of liberal Democrats, it would have capped at 10% the limit on the nation’s total insured deposits any single bank holding company could carry. It would have also set a 6% leverage limit for banks and capped their non-deposit liabilities at 2% of U.S. gross domestic product.

   If you look at the Democrats who voted against the caps, many of them are awash in financial services legalized corruption (read: campaign contributions).