Law and regulation

Planned price increases and hints that households are looking for higher yields for their savings suggest that the flood tide of deposits could finally be ebbing.

A uniform mortgage-backed-security product, more risk sharing and help for small banks are some of the housing-finance fixes that the Mortgage Bankers Association urges regulators to make now.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau named a new chief operating officer and chief of staff, among other appointments, following a string of recent departures in its senior level suite.

Other countries are discussing implementing capital reforms that go beyond Basel III after the U.S. proposed a leverage ratio higher than the international accord, Federal Reserve Board Gov. Daniel Tarullo said Monday.

A bipartisan commission, in lieu of a director, would encourage internal deliberation and constrain the CFPB’s ability to make politically motivated or ill-informed decisions.

The law firm BuckleySandler has beefed up its financial services practice with the addition of three heavy-hitting litigators all lured away from Dykema Gossett PLLC.

Barclays is in an awkward situation that will ring familiar to bankers in the U.S. The U.K. bank has been terminating relationships with money transmitters, including several that wire funds to Somalia, a ravaged country that relies heavily on remittances from immigrants in the West. The bank says it's uncomfortable with the risk and expense of serving these businesses in light of recent fines levied against big financial institutions for anti-money laundering lapses. But now it's being accused of starting a humanitarian crisis.

The Senate Banking Committee's Republican chief counsel and deputy staff director, Andrew Olmem, joined the law firm Venable as a partner.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is approaching supervision of debt collectors much like it did with mortgage servicers and auto lenders earlier this year, saying it plans to hold banks responsible for third-party actions.

JPMorgan Chase's leaders on Friday rebuffed questions about the widespread problems in their credit card debt collections operations — and about what they are doing to fix them.

Satirical newspaper The Onion claimed that Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke is a big fan of "Pacific Rim," a movie about giant robots fighting giant monsters.

The CFPB is taking aggressive action against the debt collection industry, emphasizing it plans to hold banks responsible for third-party actions.

Andrew Olmem, a long-time staffer on the Senate Banking Committee, has joined the law firm Venable as a partner.

JPMorgan Chase, reporting a 31% increase in its second-quarter net income driven by investment banking, also reported that its credit-card business is stabilizing.

Eliot Spitzer wants to return to New York politics, and says he's gunning for the dual chairman/CEO roles at banks including JPMorgan Chase. CEO Jamie Dimon and others responded diplomatically on Friday.

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

Bitcoin exchange Coinbase will offer instant purchases for users that supply identity information, with others having to wait four days for transactions to complete.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized clarifications, which were first proposed in April, to its ability-to-repay and mortgage servicing rules Wednesday.

Inconsistent calculations and disclosures usually make it impossible for investors to distinguish differences in credit risk from differences in measurement practices when comparing banks.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren and her colleagues are working to drum up support for a new bipartisan bill that would bring back a Depression-era law separating commercial and investment banks.