The Dodd-Frank law aimed to tighten financial regulations in hopes of preventing another meltdown. Among other things, it called for greater transparency in the trading of derivatives.

But in the new Weekend Business podcast, Gretchen Morgenson says an effort is under way in Congress to roll back new rules that would require that certain derivatives — those in the $50 billion swaps market — trade openly on exchanges like stocks or bonds. At the moment, she says in her column in Sunday Business, they trade in one-on-one conversations on the telephone, which, in general, probably results in higher prices and fees.

In another conversation on the podcast, Robert Shiller, the Yale economics professor, says the failure of the Congressional supercommittee to reach a compromise on trimming the United States budget deficit sends the wrong signals about unemployment. Will Congress transcend partisanship and agree on programs that will create jobs, putting the long-term unemployed back to work? In the Economic View column in Sunday Business, he says that this is a truly critical problem, but that it isn’t being treated as such by political leaders. And the inability of the economics profession to reach a consensus on the effects of fiscal stimulus hasn’t helped matters, he says.

In a separate discussion, Natasha Singer tells David Gillen about the Freedom Group, a little-known power in the American gun business which is the focus of her cover article in Sunday Business.  Backed by Cerberus Capital Management, a giant private equity firm, Freedom Group now controls the 195-year-old Remington Arms, as well as Bushmaster Firearms and DPMS Firearms, leading makers of military-style semiautomatics.  

You can find specific segments of the podcast at these junctures: Gretchen Morgenson on derivative trading (30:41); news headlines (22:38); the American gun business (19:00); Robert Shiller (9:35); the week ahead (1:33).

As articles discussed in the podcast are published during the weekend, links will be added to this post.

You can download the program by subscribing from The New York Times’s podcast page or directly from iTunes.

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