Law and regulation

The cap on the size of mortgages that government-sponsored enterprises can guarantee will remain unchanged at the start of 2014.

Big-bank executives should finalize living wills, hold each other publicly accountable and re-teach ethics training within their rank-and-file if they hope to escape an escalated regulatory crackdown.

WASHINGTON — Higher interest rates and elevated litigation expenses at one large bank last quarter led to the industry's first year-over-year earnings decline in more than four years.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s inspector general said in a report Friday that there must be stronger coordination between agency divisions to carry out Dodd-Frank responsibilities dealing with the resolution of failed behemoths.

Modern giants are likely to behave at least as badly as their World War II counterparts.

First Merchants (FRME) in Muncie, Ind., has exited the Small Business Lending Fund.

If consumers were worried about a government shutdown or stalled debt ceiling talks affecting the economy, they didn’t show it by holding off on credit card spending in October, a First Data Corp. report indicates.

Wall Street banks reeling from a flurry of activity by departing U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler are considering taking the agency to court.

Lenders’ choices today are stark: Make Qualified Mortgage loans and risk being sued under the disparate-impact doctrine; make non-QM loans and risk being sued under the ability-to-pay-doctrine; or sell their loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Former Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Barney Frank called Friday for both stringent standards and lenient enforcement around the 2010 Dodd-Frank law's Volcker Rule.

Regulators are closing in on a final Volcker Rule to restrict proprietary trading, dialing up certain requirements related to documentation while providing some flexibility on "market making" activities. This story includes a fully interactive timeline on Volcker's contentious history.

The world of lending and loan servicing is undergoing huge transformation, with operational changes that will take time to play out.

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NEW YORK — Federal Reserve Bank of New York general counsel Thomas C. Baxter Jr. criticized the financial services industry's ethics and culture on Friday, faulting bankers for valuing profits over relationships.

Barely a handful of lenders are refinancing student loans, despite a prolonged period of low interest rates and the surging debt burden for college graduates.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s watchdog is urging stronger coordination between separate agency divisions among its recommendations for improving the implementation of Dodd-Frank Act resolution powers.

The former president and chief executive of Bank of Choice in Greeley, Colo., will pay $65,000 to investors to settle charges he violated registration and anti-fraud provisions of the Colorado Securities Act.

Federal Reserve Board Gov. Daniel Tarullo on Friday floated three ways policymakers could strengthen a set of proposed market-wide reforms for securities financing transactions.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is urging regulators to strengthen their supplemental leverage ratio in order to help eliminate concerns over "too big to fail."

Retired Congressman Barney Frank, one of the architects of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, called Friday for both stringent standards and lenient enforcement around the law's much-watched Volcker rule.