Academic

The Times profiles Robert Steel, mid-level Treasury bureaucrat, and Paulson?s point man on regulatory reform, and it puts the question pretty bluntly: what, exactly, does a former Goldman Sachs executive and US Chamber of Commerce appointee want out of financial regulation?

One does wonder, but the story doesn't really give us the answer. Steel is the guy who told Congress that Treasury wanted the Bear bailout to be at a super-low price.  Both Steel and Paulson get portrayed as technocrats, rather than the representatives of Wall Street, and, if you?re keeping score at home, the Times notes that Barney Frank supports regulatory reform (?we need to regulate risk in ways that we haven?t?) and that the AFL-CIO is against it (quoting a labor lawyer ?who is a critic of the blueprint?).

But while Steel tries to gin up support for Paulson?s reorg, he?s keeping busy in other ways. Here?s what?s coming from Treasury: a voluntary code of conduct for hedge funds and advice from Calpers to pension funds like it:

On Tuesday, Mr. Steel?s office will bless the release of two reports that examine the issues of hedge funds, risk and investor protection. In one, Eric Mindich, a former Goldman executive who now runs the hedge fund Eton Park, will ? with a group of supporting funds ? propose nonbinding steps that hedge funds should take. They include publishing audited financial statements like public companies do, the establishment of conflict committees and disclosing on a quarterly basis the extent of their hard-to-value assets.

The other report, directed by Russell Read, the chief investment officer of Calpers, the California state pension fund, will address the question of applicability of such funds to different classes of investors.