Law and regulation

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced Tuesday that it's seeking public comment ahead of a second study on the credit card market that could pave the way for new regulations or enforcement actions.

The controversial $50 billion-asset cutoff was one of a host of policy issues the Treasury secretary addressed before lawmakers on Tuesday.

A new book by the American Enterprise Institute's Peter Wallison reveals how a government push to lower credit standards brought about the housing crisis — and why a new effort to expand homeownership could inadvertently set the stage for a fresh disaster.

Meta Financial Group in Sioux Falls, N.D., expects to have a strong fiscal second quarter despite a small charge tied to brokered deposits.

The smaller banks in the FDIC's deposit insurance fund are subsidizing the activities of the largest banks. A two-tiered approach would go a long way toward addressing moral hazard and the too big to fail problem.

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve Board issued a proposal Monday that would require certain financial institutions that have been assigned Legal Entity Identifiers to include that information in their regular reports, a first but tentative step toward broader reliance on the universal counterparty ID.

Lending groups are demanding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau take down its mortgage rate calculator, arguing it is providing misleading information to consumers.

Nomura Holdings Inc. and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc helped fuel a bubble that led to the collapse of the U.S. housing market, an attorney for the Federal Housing Finance Agency said at the opening of a trial over defective mortgage-backed securities.

Westamerica Bancorp. probably expected little trouble when it asked for regulatory permission to close a small branch in northern California. Wrong! Welcome to the world of online petitions and social media.

Frank Hamlin, CEO of Canandaigua National, suggested in a recent letter to shareholders that N.Y. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's cases against Financial Institutions Inc. and Evans Bancorp were politically motivated.

A top Justice Department prosecutor said the U.S. is prepared to punish banks for violating criminal settlements, an unprecedented move designed to crack down on repeat offenders.

A recent Supreme Court decision means that one exemption to the Fair Labor Standards Act does not apply to mortgage salespeople, but their employers might still be able to take advantage of other exemptions.

Bipartisan legislation introduced in the Senate this week would make it easier for consumers to secure financing to purchase manufactured housing.

Ed DeMarco, the former chief regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, warned that efforts under the Obama administration to expand access to credit could risk repeating mistakes that led up to the crisis.

A recap of the informed opinions (and the discussions they generated) on BankThink this week, including the benefits of regulating banks by complexity rather than size and how to make the Fed's stress tests more effective.

Bankers were jolted last month by an updated Office of the Comptroller of the Currency supervision handbook that suggested a major shift in how examiners view overdraft regulation.

Informing banks about the details of stress-test requirements in advance would help mitigate financial institutions' unnecessary costs. And conducting the tests on a quarterly basis would ensure that banks are unable to game the system.

WASHINGTON — Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., renewed his push Thursday to allow bankruptcy judges to cram down private student loan debt, introducing a bill on the issue with 12 other Democrats.

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.

Hencorp Becstone Capital in Miami has agreed to pay $3.8 million to settle allegations that it provided inaccurate statements and claims to the Export-Import Bank.