Law and regulation

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s board of directors voted to approve a $2.7 billion budget for 2013. With fewer anticipated costs for bank failures and their clean-ups, the budget for the upcoming year had an 18% drop from previous years.

Twitter's immense popularity has caught the attention of many established payment companies and entrepreneurs. Several have attempted to turn the microblogging service into a payment channel, but so far there are few success stories.

"Regulators from the U.S. and the United Kingdom took a major step Monday toward proving that they could dismantle a large globally active financial institution, outlining how the two sides would cooperate in the event of a cross-border resolution," writesAmerican Banker's Joe Adler.

A dispute in North Dakota over assessment fees for its state-owned bank could stymie efforts to open similar banks elsewhere.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a proposal Thursday that would let lenders test various disclosure programs on consumers in an effort to make disclosures more concise and cost-effective.

Some readers quickly labeled all 19 megabanks' failure to pass the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's new risk tests as evidence that "Too Big to Fail" remains very much alive. Others blamed the OCC's stricter standards.

Efforts to extend the Transaction Account Guarantee program were dealt a significant blow Thursday as senators blocked a vote on a two-year extension over objections it would cost the government money.

The Officer of the Comptroller of the Currency is trying to shift big bank execs' focus to risks in areas like governance, operations, internal controls and communications. So far, most are failing.

The Treasury said Thursday that it should gross about $23.8 million from auctioning stakes in seven participants in the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The expected proceeds would represent a 9% discount from the nearly $26 million that the government originally invested in those banks.

This platform will need to be enterprise-level to ensure consistency in the application of economic scenarios, model use and reporting.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency recently graded the 19 largest banks on five factors designed to gauge how well they are being run. The results are shocking.

Consumers disputed up to 38 million items on their consumer credit reports last year at the three largest consumer reporting agencies, according to a report released Thursday by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday that regulators are nearing completion of a contentious rule that will ban proprietary trading at U.S. firms.

The House passed a bill by voice vote Wednesday that would exempt banks from sending out privacy notices to customers if the disclosures haven't changed from the prior year.

The House Financial Services Committee had tough questions for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Wednesday over its implementation of derivatives provisions laid out in the Dodd-Frank reform law.

Six Federal Home Loan banks have dramatically increased home loan purchases from their members and are selling the loans to Fannie Mae, filling the gap created when large aggregators like Bank of America exited the correspondent business.

The government's recent efforts to stimulate the economy are driving up prices for MBS, creating the potential of interest rate risk for banks that are struggling to make loans.

Outspoken CEO, undeterred by recent setbacks, defends the industry's right to confront Washington, denies 'whale' losses prompted exec shuffle, dismisses chatter that he's headed to Treasury.

The prospects for a bill that would extend a program that provides a federal guarantee for certain business deposits are rapidly fading as Republicans prepare to offer a point of order designed to kill the measure.

Tax incentives and penalties drive behavior regardless of whether or not they represent sound economic reality. And banks will be asked to provide lending and investment support accordingly.