Law and regulation

A VIP program run by Countrywide benefited numerous members of Congress, a handful of Capitol Hill staffers and then-HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson, according to a report from the House Oversight Committee.

There are legitimate reasons to want to wind down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Unfortunately, we haven't stopped talking about the specious ones.

Preparing systems for the Single Euro Payments Area may be more complex and time-consuming than many European corporations and banks realize. To ease this complexity, SunGard is offering software to centralize payments management.

The two year anniversary of the signing of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is approaching and many rules required by the legislation still remain unwritten, according to a report from the law firm Davis Polk.

Federal banking regulators repeatedly fell short in their efforts to alert foreclosed homeowners that they may be eligible for monetary relief, according to a new report from a government watchdog agency.

The Office of Financial Research is not yet fully operational. Critics on the Hill want to gut the agency. Its forthcoming annual report presents a chance to win over lawmakers.

The Federal Reserve Board terminated written agreements with bank companies in Minnesota and Oregon and entered into a new one with a Maryland company.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency published its first Semiannual Risk Review, a report offering a rare distillation of what it sees as the greatest safety and soundness threats facing banks, including weaker underwriting standards and new, potentially dangerous, products.

David Hirschmann, the president and chief executive of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness, has some suggestions for Richard Cordray. In a letter to the CFPB director he "cited concerns about the new 'abusive' standard that was added to the Dodd-Frank Act, along with the already statutory terms 'unfair and deceptive practices,'" writes American Banker’s Rob Blackwell.

While nine of the largest, most complex U.S. banks largely followed the same template in filing their "living wills," there were subtle but significant differences in their approach.

Federal Reserve officials spoke out twice in the past month to send a signal to money-market funds resisting tighter U.S. regulation. The message: New rules are coming, one way or another.

Still holding stakes in some 325 banks, the Treasury is expected to accept bigger discounts as it works to unwind the bailout-era program.

Dodd-Frank has had "crushing impact" on banks and businesses according report from the Georgia Public Policy Foundation and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Four New York thrifts — Dime Savings, CMS, NorthEast Community and Fairport Savings — received approval Monday to switch from federal to state charters, adding to a growing list of converts nationwide.

Neither the FSOC nor the OFR is up and running well enough to address systemic risk. The Systemic Risk Council, a new private-sector nonprofit group, will likely change that.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency provided an update Tuesday to its pilot program designed to turn foreclosed properties into rental homes, saying it had announced the first round of winning bidders.

Solera National Bank in Lakewood, Colo., has been freed from a consent order under which it had been operating for more than two years.

For some bankers, doing well by doing bad has become a way of life. If ever there was a time to raise the cost of wrongdoing, Liborgate is it.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners will hold a hearing on possible abuses in August. Yet a key regulator doubts the industry is seriously troubled.

Lending to American consumers, businesses and other entities is, as best practiced, far from a simple business. Going beyond this to dabble in opaque markets will inevitably degrade the competence with which banks' basic business is conducted.