Emily Flitter

A regulatory report on the status of syndicated credits — loans of more than $20 million held by three or more financial institutions — was the bleakest in years.

Leaders from the G20 countries are gathering in Pittsburgh today to try to coordinate their regulatory reform efforts, but another push to restructure global financial governance is also underway: The Dutch government and the World Legal Forum in The Hague are exploring the idea of creating an international financial court.

WASHINGTON — The House voted Wednesday to expand a small-business lending program created by the stimulus package and allow more borrowers to access it.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is appearing once again before the House Financial Services Committee to defend the Obama administration's proposals to reform the financial system.

A top member of the Senate Banking Committee unveiled a bill Tuesday to regulate derivatives.

Market analysts have finally figured out how to do what mortgage servicers had deemed impossible: They have begun to pinpoint defaulting borrowers who strategically walked away from their houses, as opposed to those who were forced out in foreclosure proceedings. Is it too soon to declare that this changes everything?

Just when it looked like the vitriol in the healthcare melee was going to completely overshadow any fireworks in the debate on regulatory restructuring, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce arrived with guns bursting. The Chamber recently launched a series of ads protesting the Obama administration’s proposed consumer financial products agency, claiming it would bear down on Your Local Baker or Butcher and prevent him from extending credit to customers. National Economic Council Director Larry Summers wasn’t far off the mark when he compared the Chamber’s campaign to the claim popular now among opponents of healthcare reform that the Obama administration is planning to set up “death panels.”

This week will be another in which Congress contemplates financial regulatory restructuring in earnest, with hearings in the House Financial Services, Agriculture and Small Business committees. Watch for new developments in Congress’ attitudes toward the Federal Reserve.

WASHINGTON — Several House Democrats rejected arguments Thursday that forcing derivatives trades onto clearing platforms or exchanges could cost counterparties millions.

Another tip for big banks trying to improve their images: Don’t let your top executives skip out on a speech by the President. It’s a simple suggestion that is apparently news to many bankers whose absence from President Obama’s speech to Wall Street on Monday has not gone unnoticed.

Lawmakers wary of quickly enacting reform could point to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which holds its first public meeting today, and argue that Congress should await the panel's December 2010 final report before acting.

A House Ethics subcommittee voted Tuesday to extend its investigation of Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., for her ties to a Boston bank that received a government bailout during the financial crisis.

It’s not a secret that the Bush administration’s first foreclosure prevention plan, Hope Now, was a failure, but now the flop is immortalized in print—by one of the administration’s own ex-staffers.

Wells Fargo forecloses on the home of a couple who lost their fortune to Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme and a bank executive is then caught living and partying in the empty Malibu mansion? Come on.

Congress continues to pad Geithner's resume; no one wants to talk about future of Fannie and Freddie; N.Y. Fed should not expect favorable treatment from Wall Street 2.

This week marks the one-year anniversary of an earth-shattering week for the financial system, in which Lehman Brothers failed and AIG received an emergency bailout. Washington-related events will be a mix of reflections on the past and examinations of possibilities for the future, with regulatory restructuring hearings in the House.

A new key player in the Senate's push to regulate derivatives could bring the Senate Agriculture Committee in line with the Obama administration's vision of how strict the new rules should be.

Go to almost any hearing of the House Financial Services Committee or the Senate Banking Committee these days and the most you’ll hear about the problem of “too big to fail” is that it’s scary and needs to be fixed…somehow. Try to get into specifics, however, and you run into problems. Example: the testimony from two members of the Squam Lake Working Group on Financial Regulation before the Senate Banking Committee in May. The economists, Martin Baily and Raghuram Rajan, members of an elite group of scholars who gather to produce influential policy papers on financial regulation, laid out in their written statements the reasons why big banks were necessary and why regulators could not impose size limits them.

WASHINGTON — The latest analysis of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, expected to be released this week, could add fuel to the campaign to create a consumer protection agency, observers said Tuesday.

Is it a case of evolution or decay? The viewers of Oliver Stone’s forthcoming sequel to Wall Street will have to decide for themselves.