For second day in a row, news comes out of cutbacks by major local employer

And you'll notice that one of our (D) reps helped too:

"It didn't hurt that Brown worked closely on the issue with House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, a Democrat, and the key driver of the reform bill, who just happens to share Brown's home state. Frank, too, favored the changes that Brown sought."

There was not tax deal for Fido or State Street - it was a regulatory issue - and if you understand the industry you realize it makes perfect sense. The closest to a tax break was voting against another bank fee mentioned in the last paragraph:

"Brown was also instrumental in blocking a proposed $19 billion bank fee that appeared in the bill in a late night negotiating session. But that effort, which was widely popular on Wall Street does not appear to have been specifically designed to benefit any one firm. "

This is a perfect example of a rookie senator doing his job quite well (the regs were good for Mass AND the country).

If you don't want to read the article - Fidelity and State Street were exempted from regulations because they either exclusively or largely only hold assets and process transactions with client money and what they do invest is generally without leverage. This is opposed to large investment banks leveraging their capital 30-1 and putting the banking system at risk a la Lehman/Bear etc.

BTW - I do business with Fidelity but otherwise have no ties to either firm.

ALSO BTW - the article states that Brown got full support on this from Barney Frank