Tales from the Trail

First of all, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro would not talk about Goldman Sachs.

There was no drawing her out. The head of the agency that filed a civil fraud lawsuit charging that Goldman misled investors would not say a word about the case.

Quite the opposite from the high-drama being played out at the same time on Capitol Hill where Goldman Sachs executives were facing the fusillade at a Senate hearing, where one senator kept repeating "shi--y deal." (There are two t's missing from that word).

Schapiro in an interview at the Reuters Global Financial Regulation Summit just was not going to go there. "I'm not going to comment on Goldman," she said before one reporter even got the question out.

Even while responding to a tangential question, she began by saying "put the Goldman case aside," careful to make sure her answer would not be linked to the investment bank.

Gary Gensler, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, likes to go to the past -- sometimes as far back as 1,000 years -- to explain the financial situations of today.

For example, derivatives existed for 145 years, since the Civil War, and they became regulated in the 1930s, he said at a Reuters Global Financial Regulation Summit in explaining that derivatives need regulation.

If you only want to go back a couple hundred years, Gensler had this to say:  "Somebody in the 19th century invented street lights, somebody invented stop signs, somebody invented traffic lights."

Things are looking up on Wall Street. What will Washington have to say?

Goldman Sachs, coming off a strong earnings report, may try to pay back its $5 billion government loan early, so it can get out from under mandated salary caps. This move could reduce the cost of the financial bailout but also rekindle public anger about Wall Street greed. Look for a response from the Obama administration today.

Outside of Wall Street, the real economy continues to crumble. Retail sales unexpectedly fell in March as motor vehicle and electronic purchases declined, and prices paid to farmers and manufacturers posted their strongest yearly decline since 1950 as energy prices slipped, according to government figures released early Tuesday.

Obama speaks about the economy at Georgetown University at 11:30.

Congress is out of town this week, but that won’t stop a prominent congressional watchdog from releasing its report on wasteful spending.   Citizens Against Government Waste unveils its annual “pig book” at 10:00.