Wall Street Roundup: Buffett gets a regulator. Bonus tax failure.

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Jobless claims down. The number of people filing for unemployment claims fell slightly from last week, a bit of good news on the jobs front, but investors are waiting for the big monthly numbers Friday.

Bernanke gets grilled. Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke is talking to the financial crisis commission Thursday morning about the failure of Lehman Bros. and the ‘too big to fail’ problem.

Buffett gets a regulator. Bloomberg Markets describes how the financial reform bill will bring insurance giants like Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway under the supervision of the Federal Reserve for the first time.

SEC probes phony trades. The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into a trading practice that has grown with high-frequency trading and that may have been behind the May 6 ‘flash crash,’ the Wall Street Journal reports.

Bonus tax failure. Alistair Darling tried to rein in banker bonuses with a tax when he was Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer, but he now says the tax failed because of the success bankers had in maneuvering around it, the Financial Times reports.

-- Nathaniel Popper in New York