Law and regulation

The chairman of the House Financial Services Committee is urging federal banking regulators to extend the comment deadline on Basel III capital reforms for another 90 days to give bankers more time to digest the rules and better assess their impact.

Simply stated, merchants have agreed the Visa/MasterCard interchange fee settlement resolves all past disputes and establishes a system that will govern payments in the future. Nothing remains for Congress, or anyone else, to address.

Bankers have called Elizabeth Warren a host of names, mostly in private, but Sarah Palin went a step further when speaking on Fox News.

Hungary’s antitrust regulator confirmed that it’s investigating alleged abuses by MasterCard Inc. over the company’s dominant position on the interbank market.

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi took another swing this week at Andrew Ross Sorkin, the CNBC anchor, for not pushing Sandy Weill on his change of heart regarding breaking up big banks.

Even Aaron Sorkin's new hit HBO show "The Newsroom" wants to weigh in on the merits of the Depression-era law, which separated commercial banking from investment banking.

Camden Fine, president of the Independent Community Bankers of America, said the sight of the 1,099-page proposal from the CFPB on simplified mortgage disclosures made him “physically ill,” according to Bloomberg.

Bank of America Corp., the second-biggest U.S. bank, received formal inquiries from investigators pressing their probe into the possible rigging of a key international lending benchmark.

The Senate's failure to move forward on a bill to strengthen U.S. computer defenses leaves little chance that Congress can find a compromise this year, as lawmakers turn their attention to November's election.

American Express said it may be forced to refund customers as bank regulators weigh enforcement actions based on consumer-protection laws.

FHFA nixes principal reductions; Democrats seethe but bankers cheer DeMarco; end in sight for refi boom.

American Express Co., the biggest credit-card issuer by purchases, said it may be forced to refund customers as bank regulators weigh enforcement actions based on consumer-protection laws.

American Banker readers share their views on the most pressing banking topics of the week. As excerpted from the Comments sections of AmericanBanker.com articles.

What caused the big failures during the crisis? "Lousy management and lax oversight. Those are the problems we need to focus on," writes American Banker editor-at-large Barbara Rehm. "And whether anyone wants to admit it or not, those are exactly the problems the Dodd-Frank Act went after."

Bank of America said it will contribute a total of $738 million to settle a price-fixing case brought by retailers over credit-card swipe fees.

Four years after the height of the financial crisis, the tri-party repo market still poses a risk to the U.S. financial system, witnesses told Congress Thursday. Yet no federal agency has taken full responsibility for the reform process, Sen. Jack Reed noted.

Despite the setback, the issue may return when the Senate returns from recess in September.

A measure from Republicans Scott Garrett and David Vitter would end the government’s ability to designate non-banks as systemically important.

After initially dragging their feet, the largest mortgage servicers have modified nearly 70% of loans from delinquent borrowers that qualify, thanks largely to government incentives.

U.S. regulators said Thursday they will be giving homeowners who believe they may have been wrongfully foreclosed upon more time to get an independent review.