Law and regulation

U.S. regulators on Tuesday gave certain firms, including large foreign institutions with a small footprint in the U.S., a guide on how to tailor their resolution plans that must be submitted by yearend.

The Fed is prepping a proposal to toughen Regulation W, which governs how a bank does business with its subsidiaries and affiliates.

Doomsayers conveniently forget that the business case for introducing debit cards was one of cost avoidance for the banks, not revenue.

Douglas Manditch, chairman and chief executive at Empire National Bank, believes community banks are being squeezed by "overzealous" regulation and are feeling pressure to sell.

Banks can do business with Internet-based lenders that don’t violate the law, the nation’s primary payment system said in a letter that followed warnings from regulators about the online firms’ practices.

Banks can still use properly tailored arbitration provisions to cut off class actions. Provisions should be explicit; silence is not a bank's friend when it comes to arbitration agreements.

Independent Bank in Ionia, Mich., has exited the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Everett Stern, who worked at HSBC Bank USA for two years, has given federal authorities emails and other documents that, he says, show HSBC committed anti-laundering violations beyond those covered by its $1.9 billion settlement. He has urged them to open a new investigation.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took regulatory actions against nine banks and freed 22 banks from orders in July, according to an enforcement update released Friday.

A recap of the informed opinions (and the discussions they generated) on BankThink this week.

Big banks are urging regulators to make changes in how they calculate a long-term liquidity requirement that they claim is deeply flawed.

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.