Noam has some more excellent reporting on the state of financial reform. The whole article is loaded with interesting detail -- he argues that the White House has political leverage to get a strong bill -- but this detail stood out:
The outcome the industry fears most is that Democrats pass a tough bill on an overwhelmingly partisan vote, isolating Republicans as reflexive defenders of Wall Street. “Everyone in the industry, their line is very simple,” says another administration official. “They want a bipartisan bill.” According to this same official, the administration doesn’t expect to have trouble finding one or two Republican senators to break a filibuster, even for a hawkish bill. “Frankly there’s a category of [Republican] who is fed up with the party on the issue. They’ve told me so privately,” the official says. “They don’t want to be caught on wrong side of it.”