Law and regulation

American Banker readers share their views on the most pressing banking topics of the week. Comments are excerpted from reader response sections of AmericanBanker.com articles and from our social media platforms.

A Senate committee approved legislation Thursday that would offer some protection from federal authorities to banks and credit unions doing business with state-authorized marijuana merchants.

WASHINGTON — Student Financial Aid Services is facing more than $5.2 million in charges after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau alleged the company illegally signed up consumers for student financial assistance and proceeded to automatically bill them annually.

The debate about how big a bank needs to be before it poses a threat to the economy heated up again Thursday as lawmakers battled over the $50 billion threshold imposed by the Dodd-Frank Act.

Ruth Porat wows investors in her first earnings call as Google's CFO while Marianne Lake moves a step closer to running JPMorgan's future calls. Elsewhere, Lynn Tilton bids to move her fraud trial to federal court, Janet Yellen hints at support for raising the SIFI bar and Obama gets ready to nominate another woman for Fed governor.

The SBA's popular 7(a) program has reached its maximum funding authority. Banks may have to decide on providing short-term aid to small businesses that face delays getting loans.

The Senate began debate Thursday on a bill that includes a provision that would cut the dividend that member banks receive from the Federal Reserve System, a measure that banks, regulators and lawmakers alike are calling shortsighted.

Regulators and lawmakers are wrong to focus on bank size as a measure of risk. A far better indicator of bank stability is the riskiness of a bank's assets, as well as which of the bank's sources of funding bear that risk.

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision published criteria to help investors assess the risk of asset-backed securities seven months after it set tougher capital rules on the products.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's new integrated disclosure regulations could pose problems for warehouse line providers along with their mortgage lender clients.

New York State's interim bank superintendent is asking pointed questions of a new instant messaging service. The outcome of the inquiry could broadly affect the way vendors work with regulators.

Republican lawmakers continued their legislative attempts Wednesday to require more transparency from the Federal Reserve Board and force the central bank to more accountable to lawmakers.

TrustCo Bank Corp NY in Glenville, N.Y., has agreed to improve corporate governance, capital planning, internal auditing and other areas after federal regulators found the issues during an examination.

Just a day after the Dodd-Frank Act's fifth anniversary, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Richard Shelby launched a new attempt to make significant changes to the law, attaching his regulatory relief bill to legislation that would provide funding for financial services agencies.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau named Meredith Fuchs, the agency's general counsel, to fill the bureau's No. 2 leadership soon to be vacated by Steven Antonakes.

Despite recent changes to the Financial Stability Oversight Council's systemically risky designation process, Senate Banking Committee members feared that once a designation is made, there is no way for a company to remove that label.

Buyout heavyweight Accel-KKR just bought a stake in Banker's Toolbox, a software company that helps community banks flag fraud. The PE firm says it was on the hunt for investments in the compliance space given the regulatory climate.

WASHINGTON — The Senate Finance Committee voted Tuesday for a measure that would extend a temporary 10-basis point hike in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guarantee fees for an additional four years.

The acting head of New York's financial regulator has asked for details on the instant-messaging service that several large banks are developing, out of the concern that many of the same banks are under investigation for rate-rigging.

The federal government's first broad inquiry into the fast-growing peer-to-peer loan industry raises several important questions, including whether banks will lobby for a clampdown on these lightly regulated competitors.