Law and regulation

Just in time for the election, financial policy wonks without access to Facebook now have a resource for wasting precious work time. The election website for Reuters features an application letting you fill key economic positions in either an Obama or Romney administration.

Until regulators are made more independent of the bankers they supervise, all the lawsuits and campaign promises in the world won't fix the financial system, says Neil Barofsky, former special inspector general of Tarp.

Citigroup Inc. (C) was fined $2 million after a junior analyst improperly disclosed confidential information before Facebook Inc.'s initial public offering, Massachusetts' top financial watchdog said.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau seeks to oversee debt collectors, changes of leadership get close scrutiny, bankers band together to avoid the fiscal cliff.

The Dodd-Frank QM rule will restrict the availability of credit, but it can be less invasive if the CFPB develops a model that weighs all relevant risk factors, not just a few measures of capacity to repay.

A report by Federal Financial Analytics concludes that the FDIC has made admirable progress implementing the part of the Dodd-Frank Act that gives it the authority to unwind large financial companies in trouble, but there are are still a number of outstanding issues that need to be resolved.

The leading insurer in the force-placed market is working to make its products more flexible as regulators push on pricing and payments to servicers. Some large banks are changing their practices, too.

If Romney wins the White House, Republicans will likely push through changes to the CFPB's leadership structure, but could butt heads in the short term with Director Richard Cordray.

Experts believe more Tarp participants will fail as the economy plods along, and that investors should keep this in mind when bidding on auctions of the Treasury's Tarp holdings.

The Uniform Law Commission's commercial code excludes debit cards, which is problematic since courts tend to reject class-action challenges that conflict with it.

The Financial Stability Board has decided to adopt a 'structured approach' to the numbers that get issued to identity participants in financial transactions around the world.

About $1.4 trillion of deposits are covered by federal insurance due to lapse in two months. How corporations have handled their cash over the last few years provides a guide to what might happen to the money.

Acting Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Martin Gruenberg is leaving his post at the helm of a group that sets standards for deposit backers around the world.

Well-intentioned policies are causing inadvertent redlining. Our proposed Dignity Mortgage would show there are few if any additional risks of lending to the large cohort of presently excluded prospective homebuyers.

A proposed settlement of a merchants’ lawsuit over credit card fees that may cost Visa Inc., MasterCard Inc. and banks as much as $7.25 billion is probably worthy of approval, a federal judge said.

The CFPB announced that it will soon be supervising large consumer debt collections firms.

Paul Whitmore was direct and blunt in his assessment of the state of payments in the U.S. when he spoke at this week's Chicago Payments Symposium at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago: "I've been sitting here for two days, wondering how did you get yourself into this mess?"

A state law that eased restrictions on credit card rates in Ohio influenced the move, the Columbus company said.

A lawsuit accusing Bank of America and Countrywide Home Loans of misrepresenting mortgages gets to the core of their disputes with the government-sponsored housing giants over mortgage putbacks.

Longtime banker Charlie Scharf seems like the safe choice to lead Visa. But for the world’s largest payments network, safe is usually smart.