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Scott Jagow: A report coming out today says if government regulators had more power and had been aggressive in stopping abusive lending, we wouldn’t be in this mess. This comes from the congressional panel overseeing the bailout money. It seems like a pretty simplistic view, but regulation is what this panel is looking at. More now from Marketplace’s Steve Henn.

Steve Henn: The report calls for the creation of a new banking regulator charged with overseeing the health of the nation’s biggest financial institutions. These are those banks that are — to borrow the overused phrase of the moment — too big to fail.

The board calls for tighter controls on the mortgage market, hedge funds and derivatives like credit default swaps.
The panel’s views are generally shared by the Democratic Chairman of the Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank.
Frank says he’ll push for banking regulation reform this spring.

But it’s unclear if Republicans will go along. The two Republican appointees to the oversight panel voted against this draft report. They argue increasing government regulation might cause more problems than it will fix.

In Washington, I’m Steve Henn for Marketplace.