BankThink

Only one day after Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke announced that regulators are close to finalizing the Volcker Rule, House Republicans continue their attack.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a proposal which would allow banks to test different disclosure programs on consumers. The testing would make disclosures more succinct and cost-effective.

Majority Leader Harry Reid's proposed two-year extension of the Transaction Account Guarantee has been put to a stop.

Capital and liquidity challenges, subprime mortgages and bad financial performance hurt reputation over the last year. But many executives agree their companies' management of the financial crisis had the biggest negative impact on their public image.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...UBS Settlement: The Swiss bank is negotiating a deal with international regulators in which it will pay $1 billion in fines for manipulating Libor, the papers report. UBS' Japanese unit will enter a guilty plea to a criminal charge, the first such capitulation by a bank in over a decade, according to the New York Times. "Federal prosecutors are trying to strike a balance," the paper says. "By levying a charge against the subsidiary, authorities send a powerful message, but stop far short of putting the company out of business" — a known hazard of indicting corporations for the actions of individual employees (see: Arthur Andersen). Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times

Rather than invest heavily in one big risky project, banks should concentrate on many small innovations, beta test them and invest where customer feedback is positive.

"Consumers disputed up to 38 million items on their consumer credit reports last year at the three largest consumer reporting agencies, according to a report released Thursday by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau," writes American Banker's Rachel Witkowski.

According to Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke, regulators are close to completing the Volcker Rule that will ban proprietary trading at U.S. firms.

The House Financial Services Committee addressed concerns for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission regarding the agency's implementation of derivatives provisions laid out in the Dodd-Frank Reform Act.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s board of directors voted to approve a $2.7 billion budget for 2013. With fewer anticipated costs for bank failures and their clean-ups, the budget for the upcoming year had an 18% drop from previous years.