Dodd-Frank

The smaller banks in the FDIC's deposit insurance fund are subsidizing the activities of the largest banks. A two-tiered approach would go a long way toward addressing moral hazard and the too big to fail problem.

A former chief financial officer at Cooperative Bank in Roslindale, Mass., has filed a whistle-blower lawsuit against the mutual thrift, alleging he was fired after complaining about conflicts and mismanagement.

Frank Hamlin, CEO of Canandaigua National, suggested in a recent letter to shareholders that N.Y. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's cases against Financial Institutions Inc. and Evans Bancorp were politically motivated.

Informing banks about the details of stress-test requirements in advance would help mitigate financial institutions' unnecessary costs. And conducting the tests on a quarterly basis would ensure that banks are unable to game the system.

Two foreign-owned banks — Santander and Deutsche Bank — failed the Fed's stress test. Two other foreign banks that failed last year, HSBC and RBS Citizens, passed this year.

Citigroup Chief Executive Michael Corbat will still have a job tomorrow (and probably several days after that). The bank's capital distribution plan was approved by the Federal Reserve on Wednesday, undoubtedly to the delight of shareholders who were surprised by last year's rejection.

JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs were each forced to resubmit their capital plans in order to pass the Fed's CCAR stress test, while Bank of America was publicly faulted for weaknesses in its capital planning process. While some saw that as a bad sign, others contended the banks appear more comfortable in pushing the limits of the stress testing process.

Banks and other financial companies are engaging in disturbing new overdraft practices, violating fair lending laws related to mortgages and being too aggressive in how they collect student loan debt, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Wednesday.

Policymakers should stop assuming that homeownership is always better than renting and recognize the economic circumstances that young people will live with for the foreseeable future.

Small-business lending will be crucial to the future of the American economy. But community banks' ability to make loans to friends and neighbors they know depends in part on a supportive regulatory environment.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau needs to improve its practices related to employee diversity and the inclusion of women, according to a report issued this week by the Office of the Inspector General of the Federal Reserve.

A coalition of midsize banks is preparing to oppose a bill eliminating a key Dodd-Frank Act threshold unless the language is further tweaked.

Lawmakers supported the credit union tax exemption at an industry conference on Tuesday, downplaying efforts to take another look at the issue this year as part of comprehensive tax reform.

The Subsidy Reserve Act would bring into the open the financial benefits of being "too big to fail" — benefits the big banks claim to be nonexistent.

Tiered regulation could bring about a number of useful changes for regional banks, including a more customized approach to determining capital adequacy and simplified resolution planning requirements.

WASHINGTON — Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on Monday said that, should he run for president in 2016, his progressive platform would include breaking up the largest Wall Street banks.

The Federal Reserve and JPMorgan Chase were far apart last week in how much revenue the company would be making after the kind of economic shock envisioned in the Dodd-Frank stress test. The gap has JPM observers cautiously awaiting the results of this week's CCAR test.

When regulators use asset size as a yardstick, they impose unnecessary rules on larger financial institutions that employ traditional banking models.

A recap of the informed opinions (and the discussions they generated) on BankThink this week, including the downside of public banking and the vulnerabilities unaddressed by global regulators' bail-in plan for megabanks.

Much of the Fed's decidedly more hawkish view on bank regulation stems from Gov. Daniel Tarullo, and some reform advocates fear that it could become less intense when he departs.