BankThink

The effects of a loose monetary policy were compounded by housing policy – not just the "affordable" housing goals set for Fannie and Freddie but also CRA quotas imposed on banks.

When bankers heard that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney had selected Paul Ryan as his running mate, most likely cheered the news. The Wisconsin congressman is, after all, the Capitol Hill antithesis of Barney Frank. He's the Republicans' standard-bearer for limited government in all its forms and has gone into greater depth than anyone else in his party in laying out a plan for limiting it.

The SEC announced that it has made its first award in a whistleblower program under Dodd-Frank, a Wall Street Journal blog post reports.

Central bank policy rates, overnight unsecured borrowing rates, commercial paper rates, Treasury bills and repo rates all would be open to potential manipulation, just like Libor.

Regulatory agencies have jointly proposed new standards, required by Dodd-Frank, for mortgage appraisals. But many of the standards “have largely already been adopted by the industry, observers said, due to the fallout from the housing crisis,” write American Banker’s Joe Adler and Kate Berry.

A federal charter for National Consumer Credit Corporations could help community bankers serve (and profit off) low-to-moderate-income consumers.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Auditors Disappoint: Initial audits of the auditors who inspect the financial statements of brokerage firms didn't go so well. In a report issued on Monday, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board said it found deficiencies in all 23 of the broker-dealer audits from the 10 firms it reviewed as part of new duties allocated by Dodd-Frank. The Journal says two firms didn't adhere to Securities and Exchange Commission rules requiring independence among auditors, meaning they actually prepared or assisted in preparing the financial statements they were set to review. Regulators didn't name names in their report, but did say the results were "disappointing" and "disturbing" during a conference call.

Technologies like automated underwriting held great promise to manage risk while easing the pain of the mortgage experience for borrowers. But a lack of discipline ushered in an environment where simple rules decide who obtains credit.

Standard Chartered did a lousy job of picking a monitor on behalf of regulators who'd flag its compliance lapses in the past. Now New York's Department of Financial Services must pick an independent monitor to oversee the British bank's activities for the next two years.

Collaboration gets lots of talk within the U.S. CU community. Credit Union Journal has tried to do its part with the launch of CUllaborationNation.com, and we continue to invite your submissions of white papers, procedure manuals, policies, videos.