Law and regulation

The executives of United Western Bank filed a motion for summary judgment that also spares no criticism of how the OTS handled the Denver thrift's failure in early 2011. The motion claims that the now-defunct regulator closed the thrift despite evidence that management had just raised $200 million in life-saving capital.

You've heard the philosophical question: If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

For differing reasons, parties in at least two cases are seeking appeals courts to weigh in on so-called "business judgment" rules, which would have a significant effect on FDIC lawsuits against bankers at failed institutions.

In a win for the banking industry, Sen. Charles Schumer says that the business lending measure is not likely to be considered until at least the second half of the year, dimming its chances of enactment.

A quick read of a recent New York Times story could suggest a tidal move back into subprime lending. But a closer look reveals a major exception: before the crisis, consumers with weak credit were warmly invited to borrow on unsecured bank credit cards. No more.

With the CFPB looking broadly at third-party relationships, lenders need to know the qualifications of anyone handling an account for them. Giving carte blanche to middlemen to hire car repossession agents may no longer be an option.

Federal regulators ended a three-week hiatus by shuttering a small New Jersey thrift on Friday.

Raj Date, the deputy director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said Friday that the agency wants to avoid creating "disincentives" for mortgage lenders and banks as part of the qualified mortgage rule.

Annual meetings held by Citi and Bank of New York Mellon have been shaken by investor dissent over executive pay, and observers anticipate more rebukes in the coming month.

Michael Berman, the president and chief executive of CWCapital, received the Burton C. Wood Legislative Service Award at the Mortgage Bankers Association conference.

Grant Thornton has hired a former Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. employee as a managing director in its national bank regulatory practice.

Did examiners get too cozy with the big banks they were charged with supervising? Reasonable people will disagree, but Peggy Twohig certainly isn't going to wade into the debate.

Randy Neugebauer and Maxine Waters don't have much in common politically. The Texas Republican has a lifetime score of 97 on the American Conservative Union's 100-point scorecard, while the California Democrat scores just 3.

A Kent, Wash., credit union joins peers from California and Michigan in opposing legislation that would allow non-profits to more than double their commercial lending.

While by law the Federal Reserve Board must worry about price stability and unemployment, Chairman Ben Bernanke appears to have charted a third mandate for the central bank: financial stability.

Park National (PRK) in Newark, Ohio, announced Friday that it will repay the $100 million it received from the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program by issuing new debt and reducing its short-term investments.

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve Board announced Friday that it is forming an outside council of academics to provide advice on its process of stress testing bank balance sheets.

The Colorado Supreme Court this week ruled that the defunct Norlarco Credit Union could not sue to recover the balance on a defaulted auto loan.

Two years after regulators gave Americans more power to manage overdrafts of their checking accounts, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is reviewing bank practices to determine if the crackdown went far enough.

I was reminded recently that the origin of the term vigilante stemmed from the vigilance committees formed in our nation's early days on the frontier where official law enforcement was either weak or nonexistent. They were established for the purpose of providing an environment where law abiding folks could be protected from the law breakers. Vigilance committees were noble and well-intentioned, but often quickly deteriorated into mobs and were characterized by outbreaks of mob rule.