Katherine Kane

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, the incoming head of the Financial Services Roundtable and outgoing co-chair of the Romney campaign says the Dodd-Frank Act needs "refining." He also says banks should "stop doing stupid things."

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau asked state attorneys general to sign a cooperation agreement to protect shared confidential information, but most Republican AGs are declining to sign.

The SEC has a lot of rules to implement for Dodd-Frank, and as we know, much of that has been slow-going. The agency had been posting a timetable for action on its website, but "this summer, the agency quietly removed timing estimates from its list of pending Dodd-Frank mandates, largely because the estimates were rarely accurate, officials said," reports a Wall Street Journal blog.

The theme of many Dodd-Frank two-year anniversary articles this summer was all about how many rules required by the legislation were still up in the air. That might be about to change.

"The 20% down payment is not part of our proposal," said Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray, in Senate testimony, about the qualified mortgage rule.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has, as required by Dodd-Frank, appointed members to a board that will consult twice a year with director Richard Cordray. The members range from bank executives to consumer advocates.

The Dodd-Frank Act has a champion in Treasury Under Secretary for Domestic Finance Mary Miller. To those who would repeal or roll it back she warns that doing so could lead to another crisis.

When will all the details of the much-debated Volcker Rule, which bans proprietary trading by banks, be set? FDIC Acting Chairman Martin Gruenberg is aiming for yearend. "That's the intention — to try to get it done," he said.

A bill in the Senate, which would require 13 more steps for new financial regulations, including a cost-benefit analysis, is drawing attention. The committe vote on it has been delayed until after the election, but there's a chance it could still move quickly.

Former FDIC chairman William Isaac and former Wells Fargo CEO Richard Kovacevich argue that had Dodd-Frank been in place before the mortgage crisis, the legislation would not have prevented it. What was really at lacking, they said in a CNBC interview, was regulatory leadership.

The Office of Financial Research, created by the Dodd-Frank Act, has neither yet become the all-powerful entity its opponents feared, nor "the muscular, autonomous U.S. hub for financial regulatory data collection, standardization and storage that its backers hoped for.”

We've heard plenty about big banks, and a lot about the small banks, but what about the impact of regulation on those that are somewhere inbetween?

Cashmere Valley Bank in Washington State is a case study of a small bank grappling with the regulatory uncertainties of Dodd-Frank implementation. And it is one of many banks that have looked outside its own IT department for help.

The Financial Stability Board has set a March deadline for financial companies to have "legal entity identifiers," in place for use in transactions. These codes, something like a social security number for banks, are to be used by the Office of Financial Research, created by Dodd-Frank, to spot systemic risk.

Rep. Barney Frank blasted Mitt Romney, who has said he would repeal the Dodd-Frank Act, at a speech in Charlotte, reports American Banker’s Kevin Wack.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke doesn't want community bankers to stay up at night worrying about Dodd-Frank. Most of the provisions don't apply, he says. Well, what about the concern that the big bank requirements eventually be the norm for all? He assures us that won't be the case.

At the Democratic convention Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Senate candidate and pioneer of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, offered “the week's highest profile defense of the Dodd-Frank Act,” writes American Banker’s Kevin Wack.

Debit card issuers used to promote signature transactions over PIN. But now, in a post-Durbin world, the interchange revenues from both are similar, so “issuers are now trying to guide shoppers to use personal identification numbers” because of the lower costs, explains American Banker’s Victoria Finkle.

The all-inclusive APR that figures into the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's prosed mortgage disclosure forms has elicited a mixed reaction.

Among those calling for tighter money market fund regulations, one analyst says the Financial Stability Oversight Council's action (or lack thereof) on the matter will be a test of Dodd-Frank's effectiveness.