Law and regulation

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.

In order to make homeownership more affordable, the FHFA should make sure that GSE guarantee fees fully recognize private mortgage insurance and restore the longstanding tax-deductible treatment of mortgage insurance premiums.

Federal Reserve Board Gov. Daniel Tarullo said a pending measure requiring large banks to hold enough unsecured debt that can be converted in a resolution will be yet another example of U.S. regulators taking a harder line than the international agreed-to standard.

The Federal Reserve Board has published an 11-page guide for banks looking to acquire large rivals.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Thursday that M&T Bancorp would pay $3.1 million in fines and reimbursement for deceptively marketing its checking accounts as free.

Wells Fargo will pay up to $5 million to resolve allegations it discriminated against mothers on maternity leave, the largest settlement of such claims ever reached by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Bankers should temper their criticism of new regulations with some support for reform, lest the American public think the industry has failed to heed the lessons of the financial crisis.

The same broad powers that allowed the federal government to place Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship also allow it to reconstitute both companies.