Law and regulation

Human enterprise is powered by financial resources and expertise. Banks truly can help people in all walks of life accomplish what they set out to do.

Public frustration has been mounting over the lack of high-profile criminal prosecutions in the wake of the financial crisis here in the U.S. But the same cannot be said abroad. Take Iceland, for example.

William Harrison, Jr., the former Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase and an outspoken defender of large banks, says forced breakups are not in the cards.

State regulators in Colorado have filed fraud charges against the former chief executive of Bank of Choice.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's expanded complaint database is leading to better response times, but the reputational risk of publicizing disputes is causing concerns.

Limiting the number of overdraft fees could cause consumers to miss important payments, be denied necessities and wind up with negative information on their credit reports.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced Thursday a massive expansion of its consumer complaint database. It will be nearly 5 times larger, making it the biggest public collection of financial consumer complaints submitted to a federal regulator.

More states have introduced bills that would prohibit retailers from adding surcharges to credit card transactions. Few, if any, actually do so, but an outright ban could further weaken their negotiating power with Visa and MasterCard.

Never before have Washington's bitter bipartisan battles created a more contentious environment for would-be financial regulators who make their way up Capitol Hill seeking Senate approval. That's the popular notion, anyway. In truth, the Congressional approval process has long been fraught for financial regulators, as the following examples illustrate.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch launched two new software applications designed to address Dodd-Frank Remittance Regulation 1073, which establishes a new regulatory framework for cross-border payments.

Defendants in a collection operation agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges after allegedly misleading consumers into paying unnecessary fees and falsely threatening consumers with lawsuits.

Mackinac Financial (MFNC) in Manistique, Mich., has received regulatory approval to buy back nearly two-thirds of the preferred stock it issued under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

William Harrison, former chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, is "very happy" with the bank's current position and confident the fallout from its London Whale trading losses will blow over.

William Harrison, former chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, is "very happy" with the bank's current position and confident the fallout from its London Whale trading losses will blow over.

Ineffective regulation creates a false sense of confidence that causes people and markets to be less diligent than they otherwise would be.

Virtual Piggy, which provides alternative payments for minors, plans to repeat its promotional partnership with the online community Gaia Online.

The United Kingdom’s Financial Services Authority (FSA) has accredited Payleven, a mobile payments acceptance company, as a payments institution. Payleven is also now part of MasterCard’s mPOS program.

The Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 was created to solve the problems revealed by the financial crisis. It placed enormous power into the hands of the federal banking agencies. Since the reform law was created, little has been done to restore the public's confidence in the government's ability to police the financial system.

The Federal Reserve Board is getting ready to take a statistical snapshot of Americans' spending and saving.

The Dodd-Frank Act put enormous power into the federal banking agencies' hands, but 32 months later regulators have done little to restore confidence.