Construction of new homes in the United States fell sharply last month, showing potential weakness in the economy's recovery, while consumer prices rose slightly more than expected.

The Commerce Department said on Wednesday housing starts dropped 10.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 529,000 units, the lowest level since April and the percentage drop was the biggest since January.

Financial markets had expected starts to rise to 600,000 units. September's housing starts were revised upwards to a 592,000 unit rate from the previously reported 590,000 units.

"The trickle-down effect of the housing number is going to be amazing," said Dan Cook, senior market analyst at IG Markets, Chicago. "It's likely that more construction crews will get cut after this, and the supplier who supply those crews will be hurt as well. This is not good news at all."

Reforming Wall Street is a hot topic on Capitol Hill these days. Congress is currently weighing two financial reform bills that would, to varying degrees, reshape the way the financial system is regulated.

Still, Wall Street's influence in Washington appears to be as strong as ever. After all, it was just last spring that Senator Dick Durbin, frustrated by pushback on bankruptcy reform, denounced the financial sector's influence on the Senate: the banks, he said, "they frankly own the place." The Center for Responsive Politics, a research group that tracks money in politics, reports that financial industries -- the finance, insurance and real estate sectors, specifically -- have been one of the biggest benefactors to Congress over the past two decades:

"The finance, insurance and real estate sector has given $2.3 billion to candidates, leadership PACs and party committees since 1989, which eclipses every other sector. Nineteen percent of total contributions from the employees and political action committees across all sectors came from the financial sector."

And while campaign contributions don't equate to wrongdoing, it's worth noting that, while lawmakers ponder reforming the financial sector, the industry's campaign contributions have remained strong:

"Even with a number of large financial institutions folding or merging since last fall, the sector has still given more to federal candidates and party committees than any other sector this year at $78.2 million. Current lawmakers have brought in $661.6 million from the sector through their candidate committees and leadership PACs, with Democrats collecting 53 percent of that."

We took a look at the Center for Responsive Politics's database, OpenSecrets.org, to see which members of Congress have so far received Wall Street money for the 2010 election cycle. The answers may surprise you.

Bank of America Corp., UBS AG and JPMorgan Chase & Co. were sued by a California public utility over claims they rigged sales of municipal derivatives and shared illegal profits through kickbacks.

The lawsuit, filed by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, is based on federal and state antitrust claims. It alleges Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America and more than a dozen other banks conspired to pre-select winners of municipal derivative auctions, coordinated their pricing, and accepted kickbacks disguised as fees from co-conspirators.

The ADL is accusing the New York Times Maureen Dowd of anti-semitism over a recent op-ed titled "Virtuous Bankers? Really!?!" The article about corruption on Wall Street specifically involving Goldman Sachs. In a letter to the Editor in the NYT, ADL National Chair Robert G. Sugarman stated, "While one can agree or disagree with Maureen Dowd's portrayal of Goldman Sachs and other bankers (column, Nov. 11), her statement that "the bankers who took government money and then gave out obscene bonuses are the same self-interested sorts Jesus threw out of the temple" potentially raises one of the classic themes of anti-Semitism linking Jews and abhorrent money-lending practices. However unintentional, Ms. Dowd's invoking the New Testament story to illustrate our current financial mess conjures up old prejudices against Jews."

Dowd is right when she states that Goldman Sachs CEO "Blankfein's trickle-down catechism isn't working. Now we have two economies. We have recovering banks while we have 10-plus percent unemployment and 17.5 percent underemployment. The gross thing about the Wall Street of the last decade is how much its success was not shared with society."

As I have repeatedly written (see this and this), the new derivatives legislation is so bad that it probably increases - rather than decreases - the risk to the financial system.

William Greider has a great piece in The Nation pointing out:

Who drafted this dubious piece of legislation? Bankers (or their lawyers) did. The leading sellers of derivatives are an exclusive club of five very large financial institutions--Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs--that hold 95 percent of the derivatives exposure among the largest banks (the total contract value exceeds $290 trillion). These are the same folks who toppled the global economy and compelled government to intervene with gigantic bailouts.