Law and regulation

The banking panel's top Republican said Tuesday that he hopes the committee will begin debate on overhauling the housing finance system this fall.

A group of small businesses filed a lawsuit challenging New York's law prohibiting merchants from imposing surcharges to make up for the fees they must remit when customers pay with a credit card.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released exam guidance on Tuesday that details how it plans to enforce its recently released mortgage regulations.

If federal regulators do not get the bulk of Dodd-Frank's provisions in place by the end of 2014, Congress is likely to take another, tougher whack at reform. It will make the 2010 law look tame by comparison.

As EMV-chip cards spread, with most U.S. merchants expected to accept the card by October 2015, there is still a major hurdle to overcome as consumers either resist the change or remain oblivious to it.

Brown-Vitter is a welcome display of bipartisanship. But its proposed solution to “too big to fail,” equity capital, is only marginally effective in imposing discipline on management.

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller's office is heading an investigation into credit card collection practices, specifically focusing on the paperwork banks give to debt buyers.

Liberty Reserve provided a service that had a true market demand from legitimate business sectors and from non-criminals, notwithstanding the government’s claim that “virtually all” its business was illicit. If banks and traditional financial institutions still respected basic client privacy and facilitated some form of digital payments that did not always involve harmful reversibility to the merchants, then companies like Liberty Reserve wouldn't even be necessary.

The FDIC's decision to fund its emergency needs by calling upon banks to prepay future premiums back in 2009 suggests that the line to the Treasury may never be used.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council on Monday identified certain nonbank companies as potential threats to financial stability. Although it did not release names, AIG, Prudential and GE Capital later confirmed they were the firms initially tapped by the council.

Overdraft revenue at banks, thrifts and credit unions has stagnated over the last year, according to new research, as the industry absorbs the impact of past regulations and braces for potential future ones.

Regulation should be strong enough to protect investors yet business-minded enough to promote active derivatives, mortgage and other markets, says Judd Gregg, a former New Hampshire lawmaker and new chief executive of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.

A proposal that banks break down their deposit fee income by overdraft charges and other revenue sources in quarterly call reports has sparked a debate over whether the reporting process should aid the development of consumer policy.

Reforming the housing finance system cannot and should not be rushed, especially since we lack basic information on the likely impact of the various proposed alternatives.

Prospects for a new trade agreement with the European Union are being threatened by measures that would boost capital requirements for the biggest banks, a group representing U.S. chief executive officers said in a letter.

The United States needs a new, 21st-century model for identifying, monitoring and reporting risk at banks. The model must be forward-looking, not backward-looking as the Camels ratings are.

Suffolk Bancorp in Riverhead, N.Y., has been released from a written agreement with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

An unusual regulatory order penalizing a bank for favoring minorities, a scoop on a new bipartisan effort to craft housing finance reform and struggles to finalize Basel III were some of the most-clicked stories in Regulation and Reform last month. Following is a list of the stories you shouldn't miss:

Regulators may be overlooking a signal that could give them an opportunity to identify a new financial crisis, according to the Bank for International Settlements.

The legal fight over credit card swipe fees has been going on for years, but a resolution nears even as opponents' voices get louder. Here are some of the most noteworthy events in the ongoing courtroom case.