Two on the Griddle: Mary Jo White and Jack Lew

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

More on Mary Jo White: The papers scrutinize the financial disclosures of Obama's nominee to lead the SEC. Among other things, they reveal how much she and her husband have made at their respective white-shoe law firms (at least $16 million combined) and the couple's plan to avoid conflicts of interest if she's confirmed (he'd convert his partnership in Cravath, Swaine & Moore to a nonequity one and recuse himself from dealing with the SEC while she's in office). Mary Jo White would get a lump sum retirement payment of $2 million from her employer, Debevoise & Plimpton, within two months of taking the SEC job. According to the Post, her clients have included "JPMorgan Chase, Deloitte & Touche, General Electric and Verizon Communications. Also listed were individuals such as Rajat Gupta, the former Goldman Sachs board member convicted of insider trading, and former Bank of America chief executive Kenneth Lewis." Meanwhile, a watchdog group called POGO is, er, jumping all over the SEC's longstanding revolving door problem. New York Times, Washington Post

Speaking of Nominees… "GOP senators to grill Treasury Dept. nominee Jack Lew on his time at Citigroup": The Post previews tomorrow's hearing. "Questions for Jack Lew's Confirmation Hearings": An ongoing discussion in the Times.

Hang Loose: Fed Governor Janet Yellen, a potential successor to Chairman Ben Bernanke, made the case for continued monetary easing, citing high unemployment and low inflation in a speech in Washington. Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Washington Post

Liborgate: U.S. regulators probing the manipulation of the interest rate index have turned their sights on interdealer brokers that help banks decide their submissions to the Libor survey, the Journal reports. "Regulators allege that some of their employees were crucial in helping specific traders rig submissions." The Times covers the contrite testimony by Royal Bank of Scotland executives before a British Parliament commission on banking standards. Wall Street Journal, New York Times

Wall Street Journal

The paper takes a broad look at the fast growth of mobile banking. "[J]ust a few years ago … customers mostly used their phones to check bank balances or find the nearest branch. Customers now are manipulating their gadgets to deposit checks and move money between accounts. … The trend is taking hold with younger consumers who increasingly rely on smartphones for everyday tasks." As a result, banks are "racing to offer new technology that will cut down on costly customer-service calls and branch visits." Sounds familiar.

Columnist Francesco Guerrera considers proposed solutions to the oligopoly status and conflicts of interest in the credit ratings business, including forced breakups of the Big Three (S&P, Moody's, Fitch).

Financial Times

"Bank of New York Mellon said it expects to take an $850m charge after a US court barred the bank from claiming millions of dollars worth of foreign tax credits arranged by Barclays."

New York Times

Columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin looks at Relationship Science, a start-up that's building a database of "deal makers, power brokers and business executives — not only their names, but in many cases the names of their spouses and children and associates, their political donations, their charity work and more." The service, which could be useful to investment and commercial bankers, promises to map connections among muckety-mucks, so if a prospective bigwig client doesn't know you from the pizza delivery guy, you can scan his circle of friends, associates and relatives for mutual acquaintances who might make introductions — or if there are none, find "secondary or tertiary connections." How is this any different from LinkedIn? "[I]t doesn't matter if people have signed up for the service," Sorkin writes. "Relationship Science doesn't rely on user-generated content. It just scrapes the Web." Comment thread on this story is great, though no one seems to have thought of the obvious joke about Sorkin already having all this information in his head/smartphone/Rolodex/diary/whatever.

We missed this one yesterday: An editorial complains that Republicans are "quietly killing" the CFPB with filibusters.

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