Law and regulation

President Obama as of Friday had yet to name a nominee for Federal Reserve Board chairman, but the selection process has already drawn unprecedented media coverage.

Tradehill Inc., a Bitcoin exchange, has ended its relationship with Internet Archive Federal Credit Union—announced only a few days earlier—and has suspended trading, blaming regulatory issues.

Government-mandated risk retention is not an answer to the problem of bad loans being bundled up and sold to unsuspecting buyers. A better approach is to make sure that MBS purchasers have access to good loan-level data about what they are buying.

American Banker readers share their views on the most pressing banking topics of the week. As excerpted from the Comments sections of AmericanBanker.com articles.

By pretending to treat the guarantee problem as actuarial rather than political, Corker-Warner can garner the support of traditional lending and housing lobbies that historically supported Fannie and Freddie.

WSFS Financial in Wilmington, Del., has repurchased preferred shares it issued the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

A Huffington Post scoop describes serious morale problems at the Fed, but lays most of the blame for that on former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan. Editor-at-large Barbara A. Rehm sees it differently.

The banking industry enjoyed a second consecutive record quarterly profit in the three months through June, according to the FDIC. But lower unrealized gains on available-for-sale securities sparked concerns about future risks from rising interest rates.

A new Jack Henry program can speed EMV-chip card migration for card issuers by up to a year — but only for credit cards, since ongoing legal issues hamper the use of EMV for debit cards.

The Justice Department has subpoenaed documents from what was Wall Street's largest mortgage due-diligence firm as it ratchets up an investigation into bank actions in the years before the financial crisis.

The Federal Reserve Board has released Raton Capital in Raton, N.M., from an enforcement action.

Merchants will be better off with a multibillion-dollar price-fixing settlement with Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. over swipe fees than they would be if they went to trial, a court appointed expert said.

Bank regulators, enforcement authorities and legislatures in key countries will have to work together to enforce Basel's well-meaning guidelines related to money-laundering and terrorism financing.

The banking industry earned a record profit for the second straight quarter as growth in noninterest income continued to make up for a slow recovery in the lending sector, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said Thursday.

Incremental gains in women's progress are no longer a sufficient substitute for meaningful change.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, by hosting the Bitcoin Foundation in Washington D.C. this week, demonstrated its commitment to learning more about the disruptive virtual currency.

Virtual currency operators in Idaho are subject to state money transmission laws if they service Idaho residents, according to a letter from Jim Burns, investigations chief at the Idaho Department of Finance.

Unity disclosed in a regulatory filing Wednesday that it paid the Treasury Department $2.7 million to repurchase a warrant to buy about 765,000 shares of common stock.

At least nine lenders have halted operations in the three weeks since state regulators began pressuring banks to cut off their access to the payments system.