Law and regulation

Congress and banking agencies should seize the opportunity to eliminate unnecessary and outdated requirements.

Bitcoin adopters in Ohio have been some of the most vocal about how state laws need to evolve to encourage the use of digital currency, but the Ohio government seems to want that change to come from the courts rather than the legislature.

The Obama administration is pushing to ease access to mortgage credit, particularly for first-time homebuyers, but it doesn't appear likely it will employ one of its most readily available tools.

The student lending industry argues that the problems the CFPB is finding in the market are more related to federal loans than private ones and disagree with the agency's push to allow student loans to be charged off in bankruptcy.

Although Congress may soon tackle whether to raise the $50 billion "systemic" threshold for banks, First Republic CEO James Herbert says the bank must still invest heavily in hiring the necessary staff to help it deal with the additional regulation from such a designation.

Assistant Treasury Secretary Daniel Glaser says his department is working with the federal banking agencies to ease banks' fears about serving foreign remittance providers.

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said he favors size limits for financial institutions to help boost stability.

Banks have never before had to establish policies and procedures at the granular level required under the new Volcker Rule. Doing so in a timely manner will be a challenge for most banks. For some, it will be impossible.

Politicians must acknowledge the unintentionally harmful consequences of the Dodd-Frank Act, while bankers need to accept that the financial system has deficiencies and act to remedy the problems under their control.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is urging policymakers to reconsider how student loan debt is treated under the bankruptcy code.

Demand for commercial real estate and business loans continued to rebound in many regions of the country over the past six weeks, the Federal Reserve Board said Wednesday.

TD Bank will pay $850,000 as part of a multistate settlement related to a 2012 data breach, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Wednesday.

A principles document on corporate governance from the international Basel Committee is another sign of supervisors' mounting interest in how management culture affects business decisions.

Regulators will unveil a long-awaited final rule next week that requires lenders to retain some of the risk for loans they securitize in the secondary market, a critical part of the Dodd-Frank Act that the agencies have struggled to implement.

Unless regulators coordinate their efforts to reform banks' home lending, mortgage servicing and remittance businesses, American consumers will continue to lose access to affordable financial services.

As the Seattle and Des Moines Home Loan banks inch closer to the first successful voluntary merger in the system's history, observers are beginning to ask which institution will try next.

Before regulators require the country's largest banks to take on more burdensome regulations, they need to reconsider the parameters used to assess the threat of systemic risk.

WASHINGTON — Dean Schultz, the long-time head of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, is planning to retire next spring once his successor has been appointed, the bank said Friday.

Regulators, in their efforts to shore up banking, should be careful not to sow problems elsewhere, JPMorgan Chase's CEO said in his first public comments since July, when he disclosed he had been diagnosed with throat cancer.

Although the case ostensibly turns on whether loan officers should be paid for overtime, the high court is focused on whether government agencies have the right to substantially change regulations without seeking public comment.