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Three congressional Democrats at the forefront of the fight to strengthen Dodd-Frank regulatory efforts want details on the resolution plans of two “systemically important” derivatives clearing organizations, MorningConsult.com reported yesterday. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), who introduced a measure to beef up oversight of the derivatives market last week, called on CME Inc. and ICE Clear Credit LLC to provide information about their recovery plans in the event of a financial unraveling. “Like the nation’s largest banks, systemically important DCOs are required to create resolution plans that would be implemented as needed to guide their orderly failure,” the lawmakers wrote, referring to derivatives clearing organizations. “However, the public lacks information about DCO resolution plans, and we do not know whether the plans are credible.” The lawmakers said their concern stemmed from the recovery plans, or “living wills,” recently flagged by the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Daniel Loeb, Paul Singer and dozens of other hedge-fund managers have poured millions of dollars into promoting charter schools in New York City and into groups that want to revamp pension plans for government workers, including teachers, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The leader of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, sees some of the proposals, in particular the pension issue, as an attack on teachers. She also has influence over more than $1 trillion in public-teacher pension plans, many of which traditionally invest in hedge funds. Her union federation is funding a lobbying campaign to eliminate the “carried-interest” tax rate on investment income earned by many money managers. It is trying to defeat legislation that would increase the charitable deduction in New York state for donations to private schools. And it has filed a class-action lawsuit accusing 25 Wall Street firms of violating antitrust law and manipulating Treasury bond prices.

When the housing crisis sent the American economy to the brink of disaster in 2008, millions of people lost their homes. New investors soon swept in — mainly private equity firms — promising to do better, but some of these new investors are repeating the mistakes that banks committed throughout the housing crisis, an investigation by the New York Times reported today. They are quickly foreclosing on homeowners, they are losing families’ mortgage paperwork, much as the banks did. And many of these practices were enabled by the federal government, which sold tens of thousands of discounted mortgages to private equity investors, while making few demands on how they treated struggling homeowners. The rising importance of private equity in the housing market is one of the most consequential transformations of the post-crisis American financial landscape. Private equity firms, and the mortgage companies they own, face less oversight than the banks. And yet they are the cleanup crew for the worst housing crisis since the Great Depression. Out of the more than a dozen private equity firms operating in the housing industry, the Times examined three of the largest to assess their impact on homeowners and renters. Lone Star Funds’ mortgage operation has aggressively pushed thousands of homeowners toward foreclosure, according to housing data, interviews with borrowers and records obtained through a Freedom of Information request. Lone Star ranks among the country’s biggest buyers of delinquent mortgages from the government and banks.

Lawyers seeking to recover $175 million for clients of a bankrupt Caribbean offshore bank are asking a U.S. judge to grant those customers the same confidentiality protections a court extended to people claiming clergy sex abuse, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn today will weigh the matter when he considers whether the private-client unit of the National Bank of Anguilla can keep its customers’ names secret while it tries to get their money back. The National Bank of Anguilla’s private banking and trust division of filed for chapter 11 protection on Wednesday. It’s asking for permission to investigate its parent, as well as the National Commercial Bank of Anguilla, which took over its banking business, and the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank. A hearing is set for today in Manhattan on the requests for the probes and client confidentiality.

Britain’s vote yesterday to leave the European Union has set in motion an unprecedented and unpredictable process that threatens turbulence and potential crisis — for Britain, for Europe and for the global economy, the New York Times reported today. Of most immediate consequence, Britain’s vote to leave Europe sent global markets on a wild descent. Investors gaped at this major refashioning of the global landscape and decided it looked perilous — or at least so pockmarked with uncertainty that they preferred to pull their money out of riskier corners like stock markets. Few expect that Britain’s departure from Europe will set off a full financial crisis like the one seen after the collapse of the investment banking giant Lehman Brothers in 2008. The British pound plummeted, reaching depths not seen since 1985 — well below the value at the worst of the 2008 financial crisis, and the euro dropped.