Jeff Horwitz

JPMorgan Chase (JPM) has sued the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. over Washington Mutual's legal liabilities, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is a rare government agency that funds private enforcement of its own regulations. It does so via its Fair Housing Initiatives Program, which offers grants to nonprofits to carry out the work.

The National Fair Housing Alliance's claims that banks have failed to maintain homes in minority neighborhoods are based on shaky factual and legal ground. However, alliances between the nonprofit and its allies in government may leave bankers with little choice but to settle.

The National Fair Housing Alliance has accused big banks of discriminating against minorities in the upkeep of foreclosed properties and is seeking millions in settlements — mostly for itself. Behind its demands are faulty data and grants overseen by a federal official with close ties to the group.

JPMorgan Chase's decision to freeze much of its credit card debt collection operations ahead of regulatory actions appears to have cost it hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Office of the Comptroller Currency ordered JPMorgan Chase to refund fees to certain retirement account customers whom it steered into its own mutual funds. The move reflected regulators' broader concerns about conflicts of interest in its giant asset management business.

The Office of the Comptroller of Currency has begun issuing its examiners "best practice" guidelines to end big banks' use of faulty records in the sale of defaulted consumer debt. The move could threaten billions of dollars of sales to collections agencies.

JPMorgan Chase has stopped selling most of its bad loans to third-party collectors in recent months as it braces for regulatory action over its credit card debt collections practices.

The most aggressive enforcer of federal sanctions law may now be New York State. At home and overseas, this could cause a lot of people a lot of problems.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has hired a lobbyist for the force-placed insurance industry as its point man in reforming a market allegedly riddled with industry kickbacks.

Bankers defended force-placed insurance practices and dodged questions about alleged industry kickbacks and price gouging at a private but well-attended meeting hosted by the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

The FHFA has yet to post to its website any public comments related to a proposed ban on commissions and reinsurance agreements in force-placed insurance. So we're posting some obtained from key voices in the industry and government.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency is considering reforms to force-placed insurance aimed at giving the public a better deal. So why isn't it letting the public in on its planning?

Banks are behind many of the faulty or nonexistent records that lead collections companies to erroneously demand debt repayments. That was a key message from regulators, consumer advocates and collections insiders at a Thursday panel.

New York's Department of Financial Services has reached a deal with several small specialty insurance carriers, triggering a statewide ban on force-placed insurance payments to banks.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Laundering Charged: The creators of Liberty Reserve, a cross-border virtual currency exchange, have been arrested and charged with laundering $6 billion. That's "what prosecutors believe to be the largest online money-laundering case in history," the Times reports, with the word "online" being key. $6 billion is 0.9% of what HSBC allegedly failed to control the transmission of between 2006 and 2009, leading to a $1.9 billion fine.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is revising his allegations of foreclosure settlement violations by Wells Fargo (WFC) and Bank of America (BAC), resetting the clock on his plans to sue the banks over 339 alleged servicing violations.

In a sign of renewed pressure on mortgage servicers, a number of big banks have ceased or dramatically slowed the final step in the foreclosure process.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's focus on discrimination in the auto loan business will likely force the banks it targets to stop paying bonuses to car dealers that originate high-interest loans. Changing practices in the rest of the industry could prove tougher.

Consumer advocates believe the bounties banks pay to car dealers for steering customers to high-interest loans are abusive. But with a ban likely to spark a political backlash, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is instead seeking to prove the markups are discriminatory.