Money talks. In the continuing dispute over the all-too-cozy relationship between the people who create and sell financial products and the people who rate their risk, the money says: Shut up and let us do what we want.

Minnesota Sen. Al Franken and Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker — the first a Democrat, the second a Republican — are pushing the Securities and Exchange Commission to act on the myriad conflicts of interest in the ratings process. Specifically, they want the SEC to create a commission that would name the agencies that rate such investments as mortgage-backed securities.

The credit raters don’t want to eliminate the conflicts. Nor do the banks and brokerages. They want to continue to have the people who create the packages of debt they intend to sell select their own raters, an arrangement that encourages the raters to rubber stamp pretty much everything as a AAA investment.

There is no incentive for a rater to conclude that a specific package is anything less than high-grade; do that, and the creator will simply find another rater who’ll be more accommodating.

That arrangement led during flash times to a sea of debt that was far more risky than anybody on the outside of the process realized — and whose massive collective failure underlay the financial meltdown of 2008 that created the Great Recession.

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U.S. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) made the following statement in response to the overnight spike in gas prices in Minnesota as a result of the temporary closure of two oil refineries in the Midwest:

“I’m very concerned about how gas prices in Minnesota have spiked following the temporary refinery closures. Every measure should be explored to ease pain at the pump,” said Sen. Franken, the Chairman of the Energy Subcommittee on the Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee. “I’m currently working with the Department of Energy to explore whether there’s a way to make sure that we can avoid having multiple temporary refinery closures in the same area of the country—which is part of the reason why we’re seeing the spike in gas prices.”

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The loss of life and stunning devastation in Oklahoma City suburbs after a monster tornado ripped through the area are heart-wrenching. But within hours, relief organizations were getting out the message on how to help.

American Red Cross

The Red Cross has set up shelters in various communities. You can donate to the Red Cross Disaster Relief fund, and the organization also suggests giving blood at your local hospital or blood bank.

If you’re searching for a missing relative, check Red Cross Safe & Well’s site. And please register if you’re within the disaster region. The site is designed to make communication easier after a tragedy like this.

If you want to send a $10 donation to the Disaster Relief fund via text message, you can do so by texting the word REDCROSS to 90999. As in the case with other donations via mobile, the donation will show up on your wireless bill, or be deducted from your balance if you have a prepaid phone. You need to be 18 or older, or have parental permission, to donate this way. (If you change your mind, text the word STOP to 90999.)

Phone: 1-800-RED CROSS (1-800-733-2767); for Spanish speakers, 1-800-257-7575; for TDD, 1-800-220-4095.

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As the Securities and Exchange Commission commissioners, debt-issuers and others credit-rating industry participants held a round table discussion on Tuesday to assess the current credit-rating industry, the world wide web exploded with commentary, reacting to Minnesota Senator Al Franken’s interview on MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell. Sen. Franken explained in his interview his proposed legislation that offers changes to the credit-rating system by implementing an independent board that decides which rating firm rates a financial product, and while the three-panel round-table analyzed the Franken Amendment, people on the internet also reviewed whether substantial changes to the rating process are necessary.

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Sen. Al Franken pleaded with the Securities and Exchange Commission Tuesday to change what he considers a hopelessly corrupted ratings system for financial products.

The Minnesota Democrat believes rating companies promoted “junk” in exchange for continued business from financial institutions. An amendment he co-sponsored with Sen. Roger Wicker, R.-Miss., to the 2010 Wall Street reform required action if a study revealed ongoing conflicts of interest between ratings agencies and companies that hire them to judge the risk of financial products.

That study, released in December 2012, concluded that the potential for conflicts remains. But the effort to change financial product ratings has progressed glacially.

“My plea to you today is that you take action,” Franken told commissioners at the start of Tuesday’s daylong hearing to discuss how to fix conflicts of interest that led to AAA ratings for virtually worthless securities, which helped cause the Great Recession.

SEC commissioners listened to 26 experts from the financial services sector, ratings agencies, academia and government, as well as Franken, Wicker and U.S. Rep. Scott Garrett, R.-N.J.

The hearing left in limbo Franken’s and Wicker’s proposal to let an SEC-appointed commission name the agencies that perform initial risk assessments of structured financial investments such as mortgage-backed securities.

“Investors are always going to have to rely on these ratings,” Franken said. “A pension manager making investments for the pension funds of volunteer firefighters in Kandiyohi County in central Minnesota simply doesn’t have the resources to do his or her own complex credit risk analysis.”

Franken has said he expects SEC action within months to address conflicts of interest in the ratings process.

That timetable is optimistic, said Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute.

“Once you begin changing, the big money comes out to try to thwart it or dilute it,” Ornstein said, referring to the financial services industry as well as the rating agencies. “The review process has a lot of people involved who don’t want anything to happen,” he said. “One thing I realize after 43 years in Washington is if you expect it’s all going to happen in the next two years, you’re going to be disappointed.”…

Public policy specialist Jay Kiedrowski of the University of Minnesota sees those moves as efforts from a chastened ratings industry.

“They had been convinced [packaging mortgages] was viable,” Kiedrowski said. “They didn’t have the ability to do the proper analysis.”

But Franken read from an e-mail obtained by investigators in the S&P fraud suit: “Let’s hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters,” it said.

Dave Berg of Eden Prairie takes that cynicism personally. Berg did not attend Tuesday’s roundtable, but Franken quoted from him while speaking to the SEC commissioners. Berg lost his IT job in 2008 and has not worked full time since. Now 60, Berg has spent practically all of his retirement savings living day-to-day.

As he drew down those funds, the stock market crashed and shrank his nest egg.

“You would think a AAA rating would be a good investment,” Beg said in an interview. “We depend on the rating system to be accurate. When banks pay for AAA ratings, that doesn’t lend a lot of faith.”

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U.S. Sen. Al Franken told reporters Monday that he believes the Securities and Exchange Commission is legally obligated to act on a study that shows conflicts of interest among financial institutions and the rating agencies that assess their investment offerings.

Franken came out swinging in anticipation of an SEC hearing Tuesday that could change the way the riskiness of investment products gets judged.

Franken wants to let an independent panel appointed by the SEC choose which rating agencies financial institutions must use to initially assess risks of their products.

The financial industry has generally opposed those efforts. The matter now lies with an SEC Credit Ratings Roundtable, which meets for the first time Tuesday to discuss alternatives.

In the run-up to the Great Recession, allowing financial institutions to choose their own rating services led to AAA ratings for what Franken called “junk” that cost Americans trillions of dollars.

Rating agencies knew that if they didn’t give top financial safety clearances to very risky financial instruments, they would “not get the next lucrative contract” from banks and brokerages, the Minnesota Democrat charged.

Franken sponsored an amendment to the Wall Street reform act passed in 2010 to deal with what he considers inherent conflicts of interest in the current ratings process. The final bill only required a study to determine the extent of the problem.

A study released in December 2012 that found continuing conflicts of interest should be enough to force the SEC to act, Franken said Monday.

“If we don’t do this,” Franken said, “we’re setting ourselves up for another meltdown.”

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What is Democratic Sen. Al Franken’s big idea to clean up the credit rating system? Transparency.

Franken, a junior senator from Minnesota, criticizes the Securities and Exchange Commission’s inaction on a 2010 amendment he sponsored that would have eliminated conflicts of interest in the credit-rating business model.

“Our financial system is kind of rigged,” Franken said in his first prime-time interview Monday with The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell.

Franken wants to institute an independent board made up of investors, financial analysts and bankers who would determine rating criteria, instead of the ratings firms.

“They made a lot of money, but Americans lost trillions of dollars, they lost their homes, lost their businesses, they lost their pension savings, they lost their jobs,” Franken said of the failure of the ratings process that contributed to the financial collapse of 2008.

“Minnesotans lost their jobs because the credit rating agencies didn’t do the only job they’re supposed to have, the only job they had, which is to give accurate, objective ratings to financial products,” he said.

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When Sen. Al Franken speaks at college commencements, he urges graduates to hug their parents, “a lot.”

Franken stopped in Willmar on Saturday on his way to deliver the commencement address at the University of Minnesota Morris.

“I’m going to start off by congratulating the parents, because the parents get ignored sometimes in these things,” he said. “As a parent who’s watched two of my children graduate from college, I know it’s an enormous day for them, too.”

Franken said he usually speaks at a couple commencements a year. “It’s a nice thing, because everybody’s happy,” he said.

Franken said he planned to talk about the Morris campus.

“It’s such a special place,” he said, and he brags about it in Washington, D.C. “They have done incredible things, become an incredibly green campus.”

His commencement speeches don’t contain a lot of platitudes, he said, but he does offer a little advice.

“I tell them there are some of you who have a plan of what to do with your life and everything is going to work exactly the way you thought it would, and I congratulate both of you,” he said.

“For everyone else, there are going to be things that happen that aren’t according to plan. … Success may not come the way you thought it would or it may not be what you thought it was.”

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Senator Al Franken announced Friday that 16 Minnesota community health centers will be eligible to apply for more than $1.6 million in funds to help uninsured patients.

According to Sen. Franken’s office, the funds are a portion of the $150 million made available to help community health centers via the 2010 health reform law.

Franken says community health centers regularly help uninsured citizens, and the funding will help them to continue their important work.

“Community health centers in Minnesota already provide health care to more than 181,000 Minnesotans and are uniquely positioned to support efforts to get uninsured people in our state enrolled in health coverage,” Franken said. “These funds will help them carry out this important effort.”

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Some federal lawmakers are pushing for a greener farm bill.

U.S. Senator Al Franken wants the farm bill to include grants and loans for small wind farms as well as for more blender pumps for ethanol.

“It’s good for Minnesota. It’s good for our region, which is a leader in this field and it’s good for the entire country because it will help wean us off foreign oil, it will create American jobs and that’s what’s so important,” Franken said.

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