In Washington all eyes wil be on the FederalReserve’s meeting notes for clues about a rise in interest rates.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), chairman of the Senate Banking subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection, is scheduled to convene a hearing on Wall Street regulations.  The hearing will specifically spotlight a Sept. 26 report from NPR and ProPublica that raised questions about how the New York Federal Reserve Bank has regulated Wall Street.

That hearing will follow the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations’s Thursday plans to hold a hearing into how Wall Street banks have impacted the commodities markets. Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Brown have been extremely critical about how big banks have stored physical commodities that some say has unfairly driven up costs.

The House Financial Services Committee will hold a hearingregarding how international regulatory standards affect the competitiveness of the U.S. insurance market. It will feature testimony from Thomas Sullivan, senior adviser for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

Mel Watt will testify before the Senate Banking Committee.  It will be one of the first times that Watt, a former Democratic lawmaker, will appear before Congress as the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency since his turbulent confirmation process. Housing insiders will be watching for clues to see if anything comes up about whether the new Congress will tackle housing finance reform.