Law and regulation

Consumers who travel with debit or credit cards have no obligation to report their bank account balances or the size of their credit lines. Certainly those who rely on prepaid cards to access financial services should be entitled to the same rights.

The news that the CFPB's Deputy Director Raj Date will be leaving the agency has provoked anxiety in banking circles. Despite objections to the new agency, many have appreciated his expertise and deep understanding of the industry.

Bitcoin enthusiasts, playing off the holiday tradition of Black Friday sales, held their own Bitcoin Friday last week, leading to a spike in Bitcoin transactions at some — but not all — participating merchants.

Michael J. Covatto, former president of now-defunct Unicredit America Inc., must pay $522,780 in civil penalties and legal fees under a judgment against him in Erie County (Pa.) Court.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council voted unanimously Tuesday to suggest ways to reform the money market mutual fund industry in an effort to break through a logjam at the SEC.

Raj Date, the deputy director at CFPB, is seen as a moderating influence at the agency, given his past experience as a banker. His pending departure leaves bankers nervous about the future.

The agency's annual independent actuarial report is expected to show that its capital reserves have been depleted by rising levels of defaults. FHA could shore up its finances by increasing its enforcement against banks and other lenders, but it may also need to tap the Treasury for the first time in its history.

Mortgage servicers are making a push to remind homeowners who may be facing foreclosure they have roughly 48 days to request independent reviews.

A unit of BNY Mellon (BK) will pay $210 million to settle charges that it let clients invest funds with disgraced money manager Bernard Madoff despite its own concerns that Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme.

Sheila Bair says we should prohibit examiners from quitting to work in the private sector, to keep them from gaining unjustly favorable regulatory treatment for the banks that later employ them. But the worse abuse runs the opposite way.

President Obama's reelection has given his administration a "do-over" opportunity in housing.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has made it clear he plans to leave office before the start of President Obama’s second term. Here are the pros and cons associated with some potential replacements.

Internal governance policies should define for shareholders, employees and the public how the bank plans to effectively manage the stated risk appetite.

Federal Reserve Board Gov. Elizabeth Duke doesn't want to see new mortgage rules driving community banks out of the origination market. Exhibit A: balloon mortgages. They may have been abused by other lenders, but are a mainstay of community bank mortgage lending.

There have been some new twists in the strange case of an alleged attempt to blackmail Mitt Romney for $1 million in bitcoins, raising additional legal questions about the digital currency.

Raj Date, CFPB's second in command, said he will leave the agency after it finishes writing a number of mortgage rules required under the Dodd-Frank reform law.

The Supreme Court will decide whether merchants have the right to file class actions against Amex over which cards they must honor, or if arbitration clauses bar them from combining forces.

Some banks bucked the trend and others buckled under it. Overall, about two-thirds of publicly listed banks posted quarter-over-quarter declines in margins during the most recent round of earnings reports.

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The Dodd-Frank Act, sold to the public as the tamer of the Wall Street titans, may well end up having a disproportionate impact on smaller institutions, thanks to the costs of capital implications of being "not too big to fail" and the advent of the CFPB, writes Cato's Louise Bennetts.