Wall Street's lobbying pricetag: $251 million

[spanone]

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney.com) -- The financial industry has spent $251 million on lobbying so far this year as lawmakers hammered out new rules of the road for Wall Street, according to the latest lobbying reports compiled by a watchdog group.

The financial sector spent more than any other special interest group from April through the end of June -- a whopping $126 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics' latest estimates. Wall Street banks, as well as insurance and real estate firms, hiked the amount they spent on lobbying by 12% in the second quarter compared to the same period last year.

"Financial reform certainly drove Wall Street lobbying efforts," said Dave Levinthal, spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics. "Even as the economy remains beaten and bruised, with some financial institutions continuing to struggle, most banks and securities houses found it in their budgets to hire lobbyists - and lots of them."

In the first half of 2010, Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) spent $2.7 million, just $100,000 shy of the total the firm spent on lobbying in all of 2009. The firm's reports to the federal government said it lobbied Treasury, White House and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, as well as Congress.

http://money.cnn.com/2010/08/02/news/economy/Wall_Street_lobbying/index.htm

[Rex]

1. Why do I get the feeling it is just back to 'business as usual'?

One day someone with real influence will stand up to the MIC and the Wall Street money whores.

[Turbineguy]

2. or 0.0251 percent of their vig.

[ThomCat]

3. You know they would not be spending all of this if they

could not prove a positive Return On Investment.

So if this is a profitable investment for them, and we all know it will be, that means the rest of us are all really screwed. We know it. They know it. And all the politicians they are bribing with all that money know it too.

It is, at best, a polite fiction that they aren't outright buying results with that money, and getting what they want.