Legislation racing through Congress to put limits on the greed of credit-card companies got held up by gun nuts Wednesday.

And supporters of the legislation capitulated, handing over their wallets.

As the New York Times reports:

It was my fellow Okie Tom Coburn — ain't he a pistol? — who put a gun to the head of other senators. It worked because, as the Times's Carl Hulse accurately pointed out, the credit-card measure was "an important symbol of the administration's push for economic relief for consumers. (Remember Barack Obama's public scolding of the banks last month over deceptive fees and sneaky hikes in interest rates.)

Hulse's piece is refreshingly good because of the context he includes, like this:

It took a recession to force Congress to finally put the brakes on the banking industry's credit-card issuers. What the industry will extract from Congress in return is unclear, but it will be something big, because Wall Street didn't spend its millions of dollars on lobbying for nothing.

OK, these phone companies are run by sharks, but isn't that going a bit far? No, because Durbin was talking about the people with guns who plunder the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo for coltan and other precious ingredients of high-tech devices. (See "Assault and Batteries," May 7, 2008.)

Durbin, joined by Sam Brownback, Russ Feingold, and Chuck Schumer was touting the Congo Conflict Minerals Act, which "would require U.S. companies selling products using tin, tantalum or tungsten, to disclose the country of origin of the materials" to the SEC, reports IPS's Danielle Knight.

Conflict diamonds are one thing, but other conflict minerals are a cellphone's best friend. The electronics industry, obviously, is not exactly fond of this bill, which is expected to have a House counterpart any time now.

But after all, 5.4 million people have died in the Congo War just in the past decade.

Activists have tried brief cell-phone boycotts (an afternoon off, in solidarity with the Congolese), but the current Enough project may be more effective, because celebs Javier Bardem and director Wim Wenders (who teamed up last year on the Congo doc Invisibles about this subject) have signed on to a "Come Clean 4 Congo" make-your-own-video contest via YouTube. Details on the contest here; judges will be Gosling, Wenders, and Sonya Walger (Lost).

If that's not enough to lure you, see "Actors Come Clean for Congo," starring, among others, Mary Louise Parker, Sandra Oh, Brooke Smith, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Saffron Burrows.

Whistleblower Harry Markopolos was dead right about Bernie Madoff but maybe he spoke too soon when he blasted the SEC for having too many lawyers who are ignorant about how scams work.

As CBS News reports, the FBI is probing two high-level SEC lawyers for supposedly using insider info about SEC probes to trade stocks.

"They ought to be prosecuting, not profiteering," an angry Senator Chuck Grassley was quoted as saying.

Here's the SEC Inspector General report that CBS got its hands on. More from the story:

Gangster geeks are holding millions of Virginia pharmaceutical records ransom, demanding $10 million for their return. Specifically, that's 8 million patient records and 35 million prescriptions. Smart move by the hackers, because there's always big money in drugs.

Their ransom note didn't consist of words cut out of newspapers. As the Washington Post notes:

These geeksters aren't the first, of course. In "Ransom Hackers," Christopher Faulkner wrote in 2005 about "ransom-ware." That was usually extortion in which geeks inserted malware and demanded money to remove it, although a San Diego company fell prey that same year to a ransom plot similar to the current one in Virginia. In the San Diego case, however, the geeksters demanded only $200.

Last year, an extortionist seized Soulja Boy's MySpace account and demanded $2,500 to return it. Soulja Boy's response? Gawker noted the rapper's reaction:

It's not known whether Virginia officials have decided to take a similar approach.

Just about the only New York bigwig who has reason to treat himself to one of those great Yankee seats that cost up to $2,600 a game is Andy Cuomo.

These are great times for the state's attorney general.

He doesn't have to do any politicking, because he's too busy shooting fish in the rotten barrel that is Wall Street.

There's the pension-fund thing. There's the Bank of America/Merrill thing. Last month there was the AIG thing. So many things. So many straightforward and obvious investigations with lots of squealers.

Usually pols — especially AGs and other investigators — have to be careful when they step onto Wall Street lest they get too much shit on their shoes and stain the haughty execs' carpets. Not now.

But back to yesterday: The news that GM has basically given up ("Deadbeat GM just a beat away from dead") and is going to bankruptcy court, though not surprising, was enough to cause yet another paroxysm of gloom and another swig of Maalox. That's a different sort of queasiness than what's expected early today.

But all you really need to know about yesterday's market activity is summed up in one paragraph from David Fry on Seeking Alpha:

You could consider it tit-for-tat — the Wall Street banks, after all, have helped cause the worst financial crisis in decades.

Going public with his complaints about the fees — and his expected ass-chewing of the banks today over what he's already called "deceptive" practices focusing on credit-card fees and higher interest rates — appears to be a smart political move: It also puts pressure on the Senate to OK a bill just approved by a House panel to limit the new fees on credit cards, mortgages, and the like. As a bargaining chip, Obama has pushed measures stronger than the one the House panel OK'd.

This move's even getting international play: Agence France Presse banners "Obama to challenge credit card titans."

The president picked the right moment — in effect, he's telling the banking industry as a whole: "You want to get out from under TARP? Then quit fucking around."

Leveraged-buyout goniff loses leverage over New Yorkers' public money, sells out to prosecutors in Hevesi probe

Your pension — making the unlikely assumption that you even have one — has taken a beating in the market, but at least someone made off like a bandit with retirement loot.

Until that someone, a character named Barrett Wissman, got caught.

This scumbag has now pled guilty and is cooperating with authorities, so count on more of the scandal surrounding Alan Hevesi's misadministration as New York's state comptroller coming to light.

Hevesi himself hasn't been charged, but here's some advice: Don't send the veteran Democratic pol any campaign contributions.

Keep track of the Hevesi scandal by reading Tom Robbins's skillful thrusts into the pension-fund murk.

While Robbins continues to unearth nuggets about the goniffs who gobbled up hapless New Yorkers' retirement money, I'll try to pound this into your heads:

Even in the best of times, and even when crooks aren't looting pension funds, those funds are being used in legal but vile ways by the schnooks of private equity. (Also see "'Just a reminder: Private equity, stock market Ponzi-like.'")

Let's put it this way: "Private equity" is just a nice-sounding way of saying "leveraged buyouts," and "private-equity managers" used to be called "raiders." Like pirates. Only they dress better.

And thanks to their revelation that their bounty so far this year is higher than anyone predicted — "stronger-than-expected first-quarter earnings of $1.81 billion," the Wall Street Journal notes, they're about to get their wish.

Everyone's focused this morning on yesterday's 8-K earnings report from Goldman and on how it seems to be raising all other boats on the markets' rough seas, but the firm's annual report last week provides the best look at the future of these pirates.

It's considerably brighter, of course, than the future of Somali pirates, whose ideology is also strictly business, despite propaganda to the contrary.

No annual report has been filed by the Somali pirates. But the Goldman pirates' report couldn't be rosier.

After looting the government last fall for $10 billion in TARP funds — thanks to a rescue of big banks (except for rival Lehman) arranged by bailout czar and ex-Goldman CEO Henry Paulson — Goldman wants to pay the money back ASAP so it can resume paying its execs their previously exorbitant bonuses, salaries, and perks.

Satellite image of a suspected hijacked tanker at anchor off the Somali coast at Garacad, near Eyl, Puntland, September 2008. (UNOSAT photo)

Yo-ho-ho and a barrel of toxic waste.

When the U.S. loses money and loses face, you know that Somalia's pirates are as doomed as their starving and poisoned countrymen.

Add to the situation that the world press is mostly ignoring the other side of the story in chaotic Somalia — the reasons that some Somalis might be desperate enough to become pirates.

And then add the fact that this is the first reported hijacking of a U.S. merchant vessel by pirates since the Barbary Coast pirates roamed the north African seas 200 years ago and made Stephen Decatur and the Battle of Tripoli part of U.S. elementary-school lore.

And now we're sending in the big guns. As allAfrica.com reports this morning:

Most stories about the current piracy imply that most of the hijacked ships were simply going about the business of carrying desperately needed humanitarian supplies to Somalia. But there's another side to the story pointed out by the U.S. African Chamber of Commerce — surely making history as the first U.S. business group to openly endorse piracy of the open-seas, skiffs vs. tankers variety.

This morning, seven Somalis denied charges of piracy lodged against them in a Mombasa court. Why, you ask, are they being tried in Kenya? A Xinhua story explains: