Week ahead: Budget questions swirl in lame duck

All eyes return to Capitol Hill this week, as the financial services industry watches to see which loose ends lawmakers will tie up in the lame duck.

Congress must pass a budget bill by Dec. 11 to fund the government, or else risk another shutdown. Leadership from both parties has said it expects to avert a lapse in funding.

{mosads}But it’s a handful of other issues — from making permanent a series of tax cuts known as extenders to reauthorizing the terrorism risk insurance program — that has the industry worried the budget process could become more complicated.

The Federal Reserve will release its meeting minutes from last month’s Federal Open Market Committee meeting on Wednesday. Fed-watchers will once again be looking for clues about when the central bank could raise interest rates.

Democrats’ days in the majority may be limited, but that’s not stopping a handful of high-profile progressives from putting Wall Street in the political hot seat this week.

On Friday, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), chairman of the Senate Banking subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection, is scheduled to convene a hearing on Wall Street regulations.

The hearing will specifically spotlight a Sept. 26 report from NPR and ProPublica that raised questions about how the New York Federal Reserve Bank has regulated Wall Street.

That hearing will follow the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations’s Thursday plans to hold a hearing into how Wall Street banks have impacted the commodities markets. Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Brown have been extremely critical about how big banks have stored physical commodities that some say has unfairly driven up costs.

The House Financial Services Committee will hold a hearing on Tuesday regarding how international regulatory standards affect the competitiveness of the U.S. insurance market. It will feature testimony from Thomas Sullivan, senior adviser for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

On Wednesday the panel will hold a hearing on flood insurance, but witnesses hadn’t yet been named as of press time.

Mel Watt will testify before the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday. It will be one of the first times that Watt, a former Democratic lawmaker, will appear before Congress as the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency since his turbulent confirmation process. Housing insiders will be watching for clues to see if anything comes up about whether the new Congress will tackle housing finance reform.

Kicking off the week, the Federal Housing Administration will release its annual report to Congress on Monday.

Recent Hill headlines:

— New GOP senator: Shutdown talk ‘ridiculous’

— House GOP ‘overwhelmingly’ rejects proposal to bring earmarks back

— House Dems welcome closer look at Credit Suisse waiver

— Warren to oppose Obama Treasury pick

— Retail sales rebound in October