Last week Lisa Chiu, one of our colleagues at SubsidyScope.com, mentioned to us that the FDIC's deposit insurance fund had dwindled to a mere $19 billion at the end of 2009, down from about $56 billion the year before (see this table for all the numbers). She thought this was pretty significant. Always listen to Lisa: The Wall Street Journal reports that Sen. Chris Dodd has proposed a bill that would let FDIC borrow $500 billion from the Treasury Department.

Nice to know Treasury has the spare billions lying around. If the FDIC's insurance fund runs out ...

Yesterday, it was the earmarks in the Commerce, Science & Justice bill. Today, it's Energy and Water:

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...are discovering the inadequacies of federal data. It tells you something, but never everything you need to know. Data is useful, but it's the digging into data--unlocking the details of the data--that justifies the expense of presenting it. By itself, data is really no more interesting than passages of the tax code or lists of earmarks. There was nothing inherently interesting about Dennis Hastert listing a 1/4 share of 69 acres (Plano, IL) on his financial disclosure form -- it was seeing where that land was -- an w

So far in 2009, 90 entities--local governments, oil companies, ad hoc coalitions of various interests, unions, airports, tech firms and others--have either hung out their own shingle or hired at least one of 65 lobbying firms to keep an eye on the 2008's federal bank bailout, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, or 2009's economic stimulus, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a review of registrations filed with the Senate Office of Public Records through Feb. 23, 2009, show. These filings represent new hirings, and do not account for the hundreds of other interests whose regular Washington lobbyists have ...