Receiving Wide Coverage ...
Head hunting: The U.S. Justice Department asked the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., Friday to order the restructuring of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, specifically giving the president the power to fire its director at will. As currently constituted, the CFPB director can only be removed for cause. However, the JOD brief, filed in PHH Corp.'s lawsuit against the agency, stopped short of calling for abolishing the agency.
"Limitations on the president's authority to remove a single agency head are a recent development to which the executive branch has consistently objected," the Justice Department's brief said. "Under the Constitution and Supreme Court precedent, the general rule is that the president must have authority to remove executive branch agency heads at will."
Pass it on: In addition to its other financial woes, Deutsche Bank agreed to a $7.2 billion settlement with the American government over charges it defrauded investors by selling them shoddy mortgage-backed securities. But it has come up with a novel way to meet one of the requirements of that settlement, namely providing assistance to distressed borrowers. According to the Journal, the bank is offering "attractive financing terms to help investors and other banks buy soured mortgages" from it. Those buyers then in turn offer assistance to the homeowners. Similarly, last week, Goldman Sachs bought 8,000 delinquent mortgages loans from Fannie Mae, which it intends to rework through third parties.
Wall Street Journal
Well paid: Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein's 2016 pay was cut by 4% and more of his compensation was tied to the bank's performance, "a sign that even the powerful and profitable Wall Street firm isn't immune from investor pressure," the paper comments. Blankfein
But he should be thankful he doesn't work at Deutsche Bank, which
Talk about irony: SquareTwo Financial, a Colorado-based debt collector, filed for prepackaged
Internecine feud: The price of bitcoin plunged more than 20% over the weekend as "an increasingly bitter split in the developer community" threatens "to literally break it in two," the Journal reported. "Developers, exchanges, and entrepreneurs have been fighting bitterly for nearly two years over a seemingly small technical question: the size limit of a 'block,' or batch of transactions that gets processed on the bitcoin network," the paper explained. "This sounds like a relatively small and technical matter, but it has resulted in a
New York Times
Evil in the shadow: Two influential Chinese financial officials – the chairman of the country's biggest bank and a senior insurance regulator – issued
Quotable ...
"There is a