Law and regulation

The Federal Housing Finance Agency's Edward DeMarco is pushing a plan merge some Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac operations as Congress and the Obama administration continue to punt on housing reform.

Ray Grace, the acting banking commissioner of North Carolina, used humor to deflect some tough questions aimed at regulators about limits on bank startups.

Criminal indictments of bank employees indicate a failure in the institution's governance, risk and compliance policies. Boards must take the time to improve their risk management systems.

FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco said that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would merge some of their existing operations in order to build a new securitization platform.

Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac will create a common platform for issuing mortgage-backed securities as they wind down operations and plan for a future in which the two companies no longer exist, their regulator said today.

Regulators have uncovered "surprising deficiencies" in anti-money laundering compliance at some of the nation's largest banks, Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry said Monday.

What will the next big legislation look like? We asked academics, analysts and former top regulators to weigh in.

Large bank holding companies have positioned themselves aggressively for a rise in interest rates, based on levels of short-term assets and liabilities. Smaller holding companies have not.

From the National Banking Act signed by Abraham Lincoln all the way to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, the structure of the bank regulatory system has been a work in progress. Here are some of the biggest laws of the last 150 years.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is starting the process of issuing its own qualified mortgage rule after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued its QM rule, which could be disruptive to the Federal Housing Administration single-family program.

Federal Reserve Board Gov. Jerome Powell said efforts by regulators to eliminate "too big to fail" could take years to complete, but said the agencies must be given a chance to make them work.

A state regulatory body has issued a cease-and-desist order to Square Inc., claiming that the San Francisco-based company is handling payments in Illinois without a license in place to do so.

A BusinessWeek cover sparked controversy recently because many saw it as racist. But it also stirred concerns because it reinforced a persistent myth about the financial crisis: that it was caused by predatory borrowers, not lenders.

The best way to meet the needs of consumers and communities is to once again have the private sector play the lead role in the housing market, led by responsible local lenders.

The Justice Department is investigating a recently acquired unit of Ocwen Financial (OCN), the company announced Friday.

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi's office obtained a temporary injunction and asset freeze against collection agencies Vanderbilt & Associates LLC and Buchanan Capital Management LLC.

This is the latest of multiple name changes for the company, which used to be called IdeaEdge Inc. IdeaEdge was already trying on a new name, Socialwise Inc., when it launched the BillMyParents alternative payment product in 2009. Then in 2011, the company renamed itself again, calling itself BillMyParents Inc.

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke said Friday the central bank is continuing to take precautionary steps to ensure that prolonged low long-term interest rates will have minimal impact on financial stability.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has freed the Bank of Granite in Granite Falls, N.C., from an enforcement action.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren reportedly closed on a two-bedroom, two-bath condo in Washington's Penn Quarter neighborhood last month.