Emily Flitter

Matthew Miller, the man who lost more than $1,400 to Chase in a puzzling series of overdraft fees last month has written to BankThink with an update, which we wanted to share with our readers.

Check out this post on the financial blog Naked Capitalism describing an off-the-record meeting the Treasury Department arranged between senior officials and financial bloggers. The Treasury has, along with other heavily scrutinized agencies within the Obama administration, gotten into the habit of trying to make nice with journalists by inviting small groups for a chat on the condition that they do not quote individual officials. Other financial regulatory agencies have held meetings that are so far off the record they aren’t even allowed to be mentioned. The benefit of these events remains unclear. Naked Capitalism blogger Yves Smith makes a point about their futility:

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., wrote Tuesday to the heads of the two agencies that would probably be responsible for overseeing derivatives markets to reassure them that he would try to close some loopholes that they, along with other observers, identified in his derivatives legislation.

WASHINGTON — Though fears linger that regulators are letting banks kick problems down the road, most observers say guidelines released last week that outline ways to modify commercial real estate loans gave banks much-needed clarity for handling troubled credits and would ultimately prove beneficial.

Over at the Huffington Post today, reporter Arthur Delaney walked readers through the case of a former Washington Mutual customer whose account converted to Chase Bank when JPMorgan Chase & Co. bought the failed thrift late last year. The customer, Matthew Miller, recently discovered he’d been charged a total of $1,446 in overdraft fees during the course of a month.

Tucked into stories of Friday’s failure of the nine subsidiaries of FBOP is evidence of a clash of government agencies that seems at first to have had a very unfortunate outcome.

Most of the action this week will be in the House Financial Services Committee, where Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., will continue marking up new financial regulatory legislation. The Senate Banking Committee has exactly zero banking-related events scheduled, and the Treasury Department is off the hook for reg reform deadlines for the moment.

The Daily Show's suggestion for venting consumer anger: the "Angry Mob Platinum Card"; Bair gives equal time to ABA protesters; MBA's $76 million building on the block ...

Six months ago, Glass-Steagall, the Depression-era law that dictated strict separation between commercial and investment banks, was out of fashion, with only commentators on the far left advocating for its revival. But how quickly tides of favor can turn: Now it’s becoming mainstream.

They say true compromise is achieved when nobody’s happy. In the case of financial regulatory reform, that doesn’t mean that nobody’s laughing.

Chasing defaulted borrowers for debts not covered by sale of the home is a thorny issue in Arizona; and more.

For the first time in nine years, Congress is poised to pass a bill reauthorizing the SBA, but different approaches by the House and Senate could still undercut the effort.

There’s a detail in the Seattle Times’ exhaustive series on Washington Mutual’s mortgage lending practices that’s too darkly funny to go unnoticed. The four stories focus on the Seattle thrift’s journey down the dark path of low-documentation lending and risky products, such as adjustable-rate mortgages. At one point, WaMu even made a low-doc loan to O.J. Simpson. Yes, that O.J. Simpson.

Like the fall weather and the Philadelphia Phillies, regulatory restructuring isn’t going away anytime soon. The House Financial Services Committee is entering its third week of markups for new financial legislation and the Treasury Department is due to release a bill on new segments of the reform effort. Also watch for guidance from regulators on how banks can modify commercial real estate loans.

It’s pretty powerful: The former chairman of Citigroup begins his letter to the editor of the New York Times by pointing out that he “has experienced both the pre- and post-Glass-Steagall world.” Then he comes out in favor of breaking up big, complex banks.

President Obama's moves to spur more small-business lending are largely a grab bag of old ideas and minor tweaks that are unlikely to have much impact, observers said.

In one of the first concrete steps the government has taken to unwind itself from the banking industry, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said Tuesday it would let its debt guarantee program expire at the end of the month while leaving a six-month window to deal with near term emergencies.

Regulators charged with overseeing derivatives markets said Friday that they would need Congress to grant them powers beyond those they stand to gain through a derivatives bill that the House Financial Services Committee passed earlier last week.

Things get heavy over the debate to create a Consumer Financial Protection Agency; taking exception to exemptions; Barney Frank doing what he can to lighten the mood.

This week the House Financial Services Committee will continue plugging away at a gigantic markup of the financial regulatory reform legislation it has produced. The committee will carry on with its debate over a proposed consumer products regulator and then move on to investor protection. If the past two days’ worth of markups is any indication, the partisan divide will dominate. Regulators will be busy this week too, with a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. board meeting and appearances by Federal Reserve officials.