Wall Street has spent millions lobbying to weaken many features of Dodd-Frank financial reform law that are not yet in place. Goldman Sachs, for instance, has spent $15 million lobbying since 2009.

CEO of Goldman Sachs Lloyd Blankfein, who has said before that he thinks the “vast bulk” of the Wall Street reform law is good, suggested there are even parts of Dodd-Frank that might not go far enough:

Overall we needed to have reform. A lot of the reforms contained in Dodd-Frank look good to me and some of them look excessive and some of them may even turn out to be inadequate. But we’ll be able to tell — we’re still in the process of trying to get it right. And unavoidably, I’m sure, we’ll make the system, the regulators, and the people who are having these regulations enforced will make some mistakes along the way, and we’ll try to get it right.

Blankfein didn’t point to any specific areas of the law that could use strengthening, and noted that because of Dodd-Frank’s “skeletal” framework, “I don’t know if you can make a judgment yet whether it’s too much or not enough because we don’t really know what it is.” Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs is working alongside other banks to fight for loopholes that could exempt half their trading business in derivatives from new regulation. (HT: Huffington Post)

The growth of high-frequency trading is beginning to catch the attention of federal regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission as criticism mounts that the U.S. is far behind the curve when it comes to monitoring and regulating a computer trading industry that has added threatening levels of volatility to financial markets.

That explosion has caught the attention of leaders in the financial industry too, after high-frequency trading caused multiple “flash crashes” that sent stocks plummeting. The growth of high-speed trading, as well as the potential damage it can cause, is “terrifying,” one chief executive told the Wall Street Journal:

“It’s terrifying,” said Mark Gorton, chief executive of Tower Research Capital LLC, which is among the biggest high-frequency trading businesses in the U.S. Tower uses complex computer programs to trade stocks, currencies and other securities at speeds measured in fractions of a second. Such firms have come to account for the majority of trades in the U.S. stock market and are expanding in trading of foreign currencies, commodities and fixed income.

“Everyone’s sitting there saying, ‘This could happen to me’ ” said Mr. Gorton.

Gorton isn’t the only person within the industry to express concern. Last month, one of high-frequency trading’s pioneers said that the current explosion contains “absolutely no social value.” It’s been two years since officials at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago warned regulators that high-speed trading was becoming increasingly dangerous.

Other countries, like Germany, have moved to curb high-speed trading, and lawmakers in the U.S. have proposed a financial transactions tax that would limit the number of computer trades by making them more costly. The SEC, though, is only “planning to catch up” with other countries, and it held meetings in Washington today to assess how it could better regulate the practice.

On Labor Day, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) characterized the holiday — “a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country” — as a celebration not of the worker, but of management and CEOs.

During a rally in Iowa on Tuesday afternoon, Paul Ryan expressed a similar sentiment, arguing that business owners are the only Americans working hard and taking risks to make “this country grow.” The comments echoed Mitt Romney’s now infamous 47 percent remark and suggested that Ryan too believes that many Americans are too lazy or simply refuse to work long hours:

RYAN: And when he says, if you have a small business you didn’t build that. Look, all we mean is that nobody else gets up at 5:00 AM and opens the doors. Nobody else works 7 days a week. Nobody else takes the risks. Nobody else meets the payroll. Nobody else goes to the bank. These are businesses that are built by the sweat, toil, and hard work of workers in this country of businesses in this country and that’s what makes this country grow.

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Indeed, all Americans are working more today than ever before — and have some of the highest productivity rates in the world. As one Brookings study found, median wages for two-parent families have increased 23 percent since 1975, but not as a result of higher wages. “Rather, these families are just working more. In 2009, for instance, the typical two-parent family worked 26 percent longer than the typical family in 1975.”

If Congress passed the DREAM Act and helped eligible young undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children gain citizenship, then the U.S. could see an economic boost of $329 billion by 2030. And in the process of strengthening the national economy, states would clearly benefit as well, particularly some of the states still recovering from the recession:

California: At 10.6 percent, the state’s unemployment rate is still well above the national average of 8.1 percent. The DREAM Act could create more than 380,000 jobs and generate $3.3 billion in additional tax revenue for California by 2030.

Georgia: The state’s 9.2 percent unemployment rate is more than a percentage point higher than the national average, while the DREAM Act could create more than 48,000 jobs in Georgia and have an economic impact of $10.7 billion.

North Carolina: The state is almost facing a double-digit unemployment rate, while Republicans have passed deep cuts to education spending. In a state with 53,000 DREAMers, the DREAM Act could add nearly 36,000 jobs and $224 million in tax revenue.

New Jersey: The state’s unemployment rate remains high at 9.9 percent, and New Jersey is losing jobs even as the governor proposes slashing taxes for millionaires. The DREAM Act could help boost the state by creating 26,000 jobs and generating $251 million in additional tax revenue.

Florida: The state’s slow economic recovery has left Florida with an unemployment rate of 8.8 percent, which would be higher if Floridians were not dropping out of the work force because they can’t find jobs. But if Congress passed the DREAM Act, it would add more than 100,000 jobs and have a $21 billion economic impact in the state.

If the United States hits the so-called “fiscal cliff” — the scheduled year-end spending cuts and tax increases — nearly 90 percent of Americans would see their taxes rise, according to a report released Monday. Thanks to an array of expiring tax provisions, middle-income families would see a $2,000 increase, according to the Tax Policy Center report.

The majority of increases on the middle class would come from the expiration of the middle-income Bush tax cuts, the payroll tax cut extension, and the failure to patch the Alternative Minimum Tax. But if those provisions, most of which have bipartisan support in Congress, were extended, the majority of the remaining increases would hit only the wealthiest Americans, as this chart from the TPC report shows:

Both Democrats and Republicans agree that the middle-income Bush tax cuts (the area in orange) should be extended, but Republicans blocked such an extension earlier this year because Democrats did not include an extension of the high-income cuts. The AMT is traditionally patched to prevent higher taxes on the middle class. Only the payroll tax cut is unlikely to be extended again, according to recent reports, and though it would hit working families, it was a stimulus measure meant to expire eventually anyway.

If other tax credits that were expanded by the 2009 stimulus act — the Child Tax Credit, American Opportunity Tax Credit, and Earned Income Tax Credit — were temporarily extended, the burden on low- and middle-income earners would be even smaller (Republicans also opposed the extension of those credits while pushing for a full extension of the Bush cuts.)

As the chart shows, though, the other tax provisions would mostly hit the wealthy. The high-income Bush tax cuts, cuts to the capital gains rate and other investment taxes, the estate tax cut, and taxes meant to pay for Obama’s health care reform law would all hit the richest taxpayers while having little, if any, impact on middle-class and low-income earners. The overall impact of the tax increases would be significantly larger for the rich even if all of the increases take place, with the top one percent seeing a 7.2 percent increase versus a 5.1 percent increase for all other taxpayers.

The top-line tax number new outlets are taking from the TPC report is certainly ugly: raising taxes on the middle-class would have a negative economic impact at a time when the country is still recovering from the Great Recession. But that calamity should be easily avoidable, given that both sides agree that those cuts should be preserved. The vast majority of the tax increases that would result from going over the “cliff” would have little economic impact since they primarily affect the wealthy, and, as a Congressional Budget Office report made clear earlier this year, the biggest economic threat posed by the fiscal cliff comes not from the tax side, but from its massive spending cuts.

The Romney campaign has steadfastly refused to explain which tax deductions and loopholes it plans to limit in order to cover the cost of its proposed 20 percent reduction in tax rates. Instead, both Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan simply assert that they will remove enough tax deductions for the wealthy to pay for their tax cut.

However, a Tax Policy Center analysis found that even if Romney and Ryan eliminated every tax preference for the wealthy, they still wouldn’t be able to implement their tax plan without either adding to the deficit or raising taxes on the middle class. And during an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Peter Cook today, Ryan refused to call for closing at least one loophole for the wealthy — the so-called “carried interest” loophole that lets wealthy hedge fund managers and private equity managers (including Romney) dramatically lower their tax rate:

COOK: Let me ask you about one specific here. I’m going to try to pin you down on one that people talk about a lot, at least specifically on Bloomberg. Carried interest, the 15 percent tax rate on carried interest. Private equity managers, hedge fund managers take advantage of that. Under a Romney-Ryan administration, should they expect that’s going to go away?

RYAN: Look, we can get into an arcane argument about the definition of income, but our interest is not taxing capital more. Taxing capital more means less savings in the economy, means less seed corn for small businesses for economic growth, and activity. By raising the tax rate on capital you hurt jobs.

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The carried interest loophole allows wealthy fund managers to treat the income they receive for managing other people’s money as investment income, and thus have it taxed at 15 percent, instead of the top income tax rate of 35 percent. These managers aren’t taking a risk with their own money, yet they get treated like they are for tax purposes.

As Citizens for Tax Justice explained, carried interest “is clearly compensation for services and not a return on investment,” and thus private equity managers “should pay income taxes at ordinary rates on their compensation, just like everyone else.” Romney himself benefited from the carried interest loophole to the tune of $2.6 billion in lower taxes over the last two years. Yet neither Romney nor Ryan can bring themselves to call for doing away with this particular tax giveaway.

During an appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Tuesday, businessman Sam Zell — whose net worth is nearly $4 billion — claimed that government benefits are “disincentivizing” struggling Americans from wanting to succeed. After questions by CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin, Zell blamed increasing income inequality and America’s lack of economic mobility on health care reform, tax credits for low-income workers, and unemployment benefits:

ZELL:The reality is as follows: the whole focus has been on how the, quote, one percenters, the 10 percenters, whatever these top earners have moved ahead of everybody. I wonder if there’s any correlation between while they were moving ahead, the rest of the government was subsidizing, subsidizing more and more people and disincentivizing them. Why is it always assumed that somebody doesn’t succeed because he can’t, as opposed to he doesn’t want to, or isn’t incentivized to. [...]

SORKIN: There’s no suggestion, at least that I’ve heard, that the reason why people have had a harder time rising through the ranks today is a function of the fact that they’re disincentivized to rise through the ranks.

ZELL: Wait a minute. I think that they are disincentivized by, in effect, if you don’t have to pay for your health care, that’s another thing you don’t have to worry about…For every step contributing to the progress at the top, there’s an additional step on the bottom to increase the earned income [tax credit], to extend unemployment insurance for 28 years.

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Both Zell and CNBC co-host Joe Kernen claimed that Europe proves their point of view, saying that the European populace has “learned helplessness” due to government, rather than learning to succeed. However, economic mobility is actually higher in many European countries (with large social safety nets) than it is here in the U.S., where “65 percent of Americans born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom two-fifths as adults, while 62 percent of those born in the top fifth of incomes stay in the top two-fifths.” It is growing income inequality, spurred by policies that benefit those at the very top of the income scale, that is killing economic mobility.

Meanwhile, as ThinkProgress reported, the lion’s share of tax breaks actually go to the richest Americans, not to those in the middle or bottom of the income scale. The bottom 60 percent of earners only garner 20 percent of the total tax breaks. Zell’s Tribune Company benefited from some of these breaks, saving $1.8 billion by filing taxes as an “S corporation,” rather than paying the full corporate income tax rate.