Here we are in November already, well past the first-year anniversary of the Panic of 2008, and any heat, not to mention action, on financial reform has been reduced to a slow sauté from a flame more suited to stir-fry.  The debate on whether some companies are too big to fail has just kind of gone poof.

This should surprise no one for a number of reasons.  For one, who do you think owns the Representatives and Senators that would have to craft legislation to rein in these trillion-dollar monsters?  Sorry, ladies and gentlemen of Capitol Hill, but we just don’t feel like putting on the bridle today or any time soon.

For another, the financial meltdown had its 15 minutes of fame. In the entertainment world that is the U.S. in 2009, it’s time to move on.  There’s Kate and Jon, Jen and John, Brangelina, etc., etc. to compete for the limited attention span of most people.

Sure, Goldman releases blowout earnings for the third quarter and outrage bubbles for a moment. But then like bubbles do, the outrage bursts.  And we’re back to Kate and Jon…

I have very little faith in the ability of Congress to summon up the courage to do what is necessary in the case of those companies whose collapse might endanger the financial system; in other words, companies too big to fail.

Some enterprising capitalists might want to think about starting a business called ‘Cojones For Rent’ and seeing what kind of business they could drum up from our legislators.

Or, we could take a page from the book being written by European regulators who don’t seem to be shy about cracking the whip when necessary.

The European Commission indeed did just that last week when it forced ING to divide itself in half.  ING is a worldwide banking and insurance giant.  Its properties are well-known and in the U.S. at least, its insurance units are well-respected.

The problem is that ING sank a ton of funds into investments that went south, including bad mortgages, and had to go to the Dutch government for a 10 billion euro bailout and guarantees for toxic mortgage assets that were in the range of 20 billion euros.  This year that particular bird came home to roost, with the EU demanding that ING get smaller and divest itself of some operations in order to repay the loan.

The plan that ING announced is that it will sell its U.S. insurance operations and its online banking company, thus raising some of the money to start repaying the government. 

The rationale behind the EU’s demand was that the company had to reduce its exposure to risk.  There was also the feeling that the Dutch government had perhaps treated ING too lightly and thus gave it a competitive advantage over troubled companies whose governments did not treat them quite so well.

Contrast that with the kid-glove treatment that has been accorded Goldman, Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, among others.  They repaid the TARP funds to the U.S. government and now it’s back to business as usual.  In fact, business is better than ever since everybody now knows the government won’t let these companies go down.

I know we hate to think that Europe has anything to offer us or can do anything better than we can. But considering what they’ve done in regard to ING, I think it’s worth inquiring whether the EU has some cojones for rent.

Far be it from me to use football terminology, but it sure seemed like America’s Health Insurance Plans threw a Hail Mary pass when it issued an eleventh-hour report that it apparently hoped would throw a giant-sized monkey wrench into the glacially-coalescing health care reform legislation being incubated by the Senate Finance Committee.

The Finance Committee was scheduled to vote—finally!—on its package on Tuesday, Oct. 13.  AHIP released its study on Sunday, Oct. 11.  The gist of the report, cobbled together (and none too well at that) by PricewaterhouseCoopers, was that the Senate Finance legislation would actually jack up the cost of health insurance premiums for ordinary folks. Indeed, the report said, premiums would rise higher than under the current system.

Now, if you’re going to do something like this—especially after you’ve pledged to play nice, as health insurers have—you really need to make sure that the bomb you’re lobbing is actually going to go off and cause the havoc you desire on your target as opposed to exploding in your hands and leaving you in tatters like Wiley Coyote or some other cartoon character.

The administration and other Democrats were quick to jump on the 26-page report as “distorted and flawed” (in the words of a White House spokesman).

The New York Times reported it thusly: “White House officials said the industry had ignored features of the bill that would lower costs for consumers, like subsidies for people who could not afford insurance.  The report, by PricewaterhouseCoopers, acknowledges, ‘We have not estimated the impact of the new subsidies.’”

Oops.

It is hard for me to believe that AHIP President Karen Ignagni, who is usually very savvy in the ways of Washington, could believe that this type of thing would succeed. 

Rather, it has all the flat footedness and tone deafness of executives who can only see what they want to see without regard for how it’s going to play out in the political arena and in the long term. 

And, of course, what it does is once again reinforce that image of health insurers as greedy, ‘we’ll do anything for a profit’ robber barons. 

Earth to health insurers: That image needs no further reinforcement.

Even the GOP, which ordinarily would jump on something like this, kept its distance.  As if what looked like red meat had a distinct odor.

On the other hand, perhaps the report did have a bit to do with swaying one vote among the Finance Committee members.  Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Me., who was the only Republican to join committee Democrats in approving the bill, was reported as saying of the AHIP report that “it wasn’t based on any valid assumptions.”    

The final vote was 14-9 to vote the bill out of the committee.

I don’t think anyone should have great expectations about insurers being called on for their input from here on out.  The folks who are going to be doing all the wheeling and dealing as the bill makes its way to the Senate floor and then into the Senate-House conference to iron out the differences between the two chambers’ final bills are probably going to have pretty vivid memories of how faithless insurers were at the end of the process.

With this report, insurers committed the worst blunder possible in D.C.: they looked desperate and they failed.

It was with a certain amount of sadness that I heard that Tom DeLay had bid adieu to “Dancing with the Stars,” the wildly popular TV show.  In an era of massive political corruption, we need as many examples as possible of how the mighty have fallen.  And he was a gem.

The ex-Majority Leader is apparently waiting to find out whether he will be indicted for assorted (let’s be kind) indiscretions, but that did not stop him from disporting himself in rhinestones and red stripes.  Apparently he was quite the dancer in his college years and that skill set was never lost.

We’ll never have the chance now to find out whether he would have emerged the winner.  DeLay had to bow out due to stress fractures in both feet.  Despite his never-say-die spirit, it just got to be too painful to continue applying himself to the requisite cha-chas and sambas.

When I first heard he was a contestant on the show, I silently sent him the time-honored message to those going on stage, “Break a leg, Tom.” 

Little did I expect he’d break two.