• For some Washington lobbying firms, playing presidential politics may well have paid off, Bara Vaida and Eliza Krigman report. While the economy was tanking in the second half of 2008 and many on K Street were starting to feel the pinch, four top lobbying firms posted gains in their fee income, according to a National Journal analysis of disclosure filings with the Senate as of January 26. They were Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld; Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck; Ogilvy Government Relations; and the Podesta Group.

• The lobbying disclosure forms also show that as the economy entered a recession in the fourth quarter of 2008, business groups and several corporations spent millions of dollars to lobby Congress. The biggest spender was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce: It paid out $33.6 million for lobbying in the quarter, a figure that includes money disbursed by an arm of the chamber called the Institute for Legal Reform, Vaida reports.

• Julie Kosterlitz looks at the impact on the nonprofit world from the first major overhaul in 30 years of the Form 990. The 990 is the annual financial information filing that nonprofits, which are exempt from paying taxes, must send to the IRS. The new 990 is "really a radical departure, requiring much more detail in financial disclosure," says Jerry Jacobs, a partner at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman.

• The International Swaps and Derivatives Association, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, and other trade groups are teaming with their member companies to help influence the debate on fixing the financial regulatory system by educating lawmakers and the public on the role that credit default swaps -- insurance-like contracts used to manage risk -- play in the financial markets, Peter Stone reports.

People moves:

• The Duberstein Group has hired its first female partner. Marti Thomas, a Democrat, joins the firm from Goldman Sachs, where she was a vice president in the Washington office in charge of federal legislative relations.

• Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld has hired John Sopko for the firm's congressional and federal investigations unit. Most recently, Sopko was chief counsel for oversight and investigations at the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

• Rich Merski, a former executive at American International Group, has joined Zurich Financial Services Group to lead the company's government affairs initiatives in the United States. He plans to register as a lobbyist. He previously worked as a legislative director and counsel to then-Rep. Richard Schulze, R-Pa., when the lawmaker was a member of the House Ways and Means Committee.