Law and regulation

Bankers shouldn't complain about intrusive government regulation while begging Congress to extend unlimited deposit insurance on large transaction accounts. It's disingenuous, and perhaps worse, it's dangerous politics.

The Obama Administration is pushing back against a recent news report that concluded U.S. taxpayers will subsidize the roughly $25 billion mortgage settlement.

CoBank, the largest lender in the government-backed Farm Credit System, reported record profits in 2011 as higher prices for key commodities such as corn, wheat and soy led to increased loan demand from large cooperatives and agribusinesses.

For banks, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's plans to take a close look at checking account overdraft fees puts a multi-billion dollar source of revenue at risk.

WASHINGTON — The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau launched an inquiry Feb. 22 into overdraft-protection practices, requesting data from a number of banks on their policies, terms and marketing of such programs.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Wednesday it plans to examine overdraft protection practices, including policies, terms and marketing of such programs, and their effect on consumers.

In a perfect world, state attorneys general and the U.S. Department of Justice would have worked hand in hand with bank regulators to fix foreclosure wrongs. But that's not how the world works.

Britton & Koontz Bank in Natchez, Miss., has been ordered by its regulator to immediately take steps to reduce the level of risk in its loan portfolio.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency offered more details Tuesday for how it plans to create a new infrastructure for the secondary mortgage market and reduce the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Industry lawyers were feeling confident late last year about a key case pending before the Supreme Court. But now the case has fizzled, and federal officials have issued a proposal that could hurt banks' chances of victory in the future.

Maryland lawmakers will consider a bill that would require the state treasurer to give a preference to banks with less than $5 billion of assets when doling out state banking business.

Facebook is becoming a payments contender a lot faster than it has led observers to believe. It has money transmitter licenses in at least 15 states, according to an American Banker analysis.

Reviving a dead bank is as difficult as unscrambling an egg, but executives of the former United Western Bank are still trying to put their failed thrift back together again.

Some small banks fear expiration of FDIC loan guarantees will cost them deposits. Others say the Transaction Account Guarantee program has served its purpose and should go away.

David Nelms, The chief executive of Discover Financial Services, is facing new regulatory challenges and has struggled to grow the network business. But his efforts to be 'almost as good as MasterCard and Visa' seem to be working.

In a recent BankThink post challenging the rationale behind the Volcker rule, Richard E. Farley suggests that not a single bank collapsed because of proprietary trading in the last crisis.

Is the right way to hold banks accountable for servicing errors to require them to disgorge funds to borrowers who themselves may have been equally complicit in the process of helping to create mortgage fraud?

Although the Federal Reserve Board ultimately signed off on Capital One Financial Corp.'s deal to buy ING Direct USA, the grueling 9-month long process to get there is a warning to other large would-be acquirers.

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Merchant litigation over credit card interchange seems increasingly likely to end in a settlement, leaving observers at a payments conference this week to speculate about its final impact.