Senate Banking Committee Chairman Alfonse M. D'Amato was the first victim of a new feature on ABC's "20/20 Thursday" that roasts "the ridiculous and the outrageous."
Reporter John Stossel criticized Sen. D'Amato's drive to ban automated teller machine surcharges as "pandering" and said his efforts would reduce the number of ATMs.
Mr. Stossel accused the New York Republican of making "short, pithy statements for television" and exaggerating the yearly cost of the fees.
Defending himself on the program, Sen. D'Amato said he was only watching out for "the little guy" who is "being skinned."
"What a great scam," Sen. D'Amato said of ATM surcharges.
Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William J. McDonough is one of a few regulators who can claim the president of a foreign country as a close friend.
While in Uruguay in the early 1960s as a foreign service officer, Mr. McDonough got to know Julio Sanguinetti Cairolo. Now the country's president, Mr. Sanguinetti responded too late to include his comments in a Sept. 17 American Banker profile of Mr. McDonough.
President Sanguinetti described Mr. McDonough as "one of those certain youths who embarked on the New Frontier of John F. Kennedy."
"He's a brilliant man with a good banking experience and diplomacy and a firm political sense," the president added. "He's become a man with a fresh spirit, liberal ideas, but he now has more maturity."
The Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee met last week, and like a lot of people here, its members are sick of waiting for Congress to revamp financial laws.
Committee member Peter Wallison complained that the legislation produced by the House Commerce Committee has "almost no redeeming virtues."
The Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher partner complained that the panel's effort to keep banks and commercial firms apart "is a throwback to Depression-era ideas that should have been discarded long ago."
The reform plan passed by the House Banking Committee in June isn't much better, he said, because it would make the Federal Reserve Board the umbrella of all holding companies that buy banks.
"Financial modernization, it appears, will continue to be implemented more effectively through the regulatory process rather than through legislative action," Mr. Wallison said.
Roy DeLoach has just signed on as a lobbyist for America's Community Bankers, the thrift trade group. Mr. DeLoach will focus on reform of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act as well as issues related to housing, the secondary mortgage market, and government-sponsored enterprises.
He spent the last seven years lobbying for the National Association of Realtors, was a lawyer at the National Credit Union Administration, and a law clerk at the Internal Revenue Service.
Craig S. Tyle becomes the Investment Company Institute's general counsel on Wednesday.
Mr. Tyle is currently vice president and senior counsel of the trade group, which represents mutual funds and other investment companies. He succeeds Paul Schott Stevens who has joined Schwab Mutual Fund Enterprises as general counsel and senior vice president.
