Receiving Wide Coverage ...
The Old College Try: Hillary Clinton unveiled her plan to deal with the problem of skyrocketing student debt. Clinton's plan would provide about $175 billion in grants and loans to states that guarantee students wouldn't have to take out loans to cover tuition.
Although her plan's goal is to help families pay for college without taking out loans, it would require families to make a "realistic" contribution to tuition and students would also contribute wages from part-time jobs. That's in contrast to a plan by Democratic challengers Martin O'Malley and Bernie Sanders, who have both called for debt-free tuition.
The plan drew criticism from GOP presidential contender Marco Rubio, who said it would spend money without reforming the system; and from Jeb Bush, who said the plan would "shift the burden to hard-working taxpayers."
Rohit Chopra, the former CFPB ombudsman for student lending, said the plan would "clean up much of the chaos" in the college loan industry. Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times
Hacking into the News: It's a mash-up of cybercrime, insider trading and news publishing.
Authorities are expected to file charges against at least a half-dozen people for hacking into press-release distribution services, such as Berkshire Hathaway's Business Wire and UBM's PR Newswire, grabbing information from unannounced M&A deals and making early stock trades all in violation of securities fraud and other laws.
Unnamed sources said federal prosecutors in Brooklyn and New Jersey are expected to file the charges as soon as Tuesday; the Securities and Exchange Commission is also expected to file civil charges as soon as Tuesday.
The hackers made off with more than $30 million in illegally obtained profits, in a scheme that spanned five years. Rogue traders gave the hackers a "shopping list" of confidential news releases to steal.
Wall Street Journal
Santander Consumer USA Holdings is officially in the crosshairs of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB has told the subprime auto lender it's found cases where Santander overcharged "protected groups," including racial minorities, in violation of fair-lending laws.
It's the latest bit of bad news in the U.S. for Spain's Banco Santander; last month, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston reached an agreement with Santander to require it to improve internal risk management, liquidity and capital adequacy controls. Also in July, Santander Consumer USA's chairman and chief executive unexpectedly resigned.
It's also the newest development involving the CFPB and car dealers. Last month, American Honda Finance agreed to pay $24 million to settle charges that car dealers it worked with issued loans with disproportionately higher interest rates to minorities. In June, the CFPB named Toyota Motor Credit and Nissan Motor Acceptance as other targets for similar discretionary pricing tactics.
The paper profiles Wesley Edens, whom it calls the "king of subprime lending," thanks to the investments made by his Fortress Investments private-equity firm in the likes of subprime lender Springleaf Holdings and servicer Nationstar Mortgage Holdings. Edens doesn't apologize for making money off subprime loans. "It's not a shameful thing helping people finance themselves. It's not a bad thing," he said.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has publicly joined sides with New York state's banking regulators in expressing concern the instant-messaging service a group of banks is developing would be used to reduce compliance burdens. Warren has requested a briefing from financial agencies to describe how Symphony Communications Services' system would let users avoid regulatory oversight. Symphony's backers include Bank of America and Goldman Sachs; another reason for the banks' interest in controlling their own messaging service is to get out from under the hugely expensive Bloomberg terminal, which is now the primary messaging service among traders.
The paper suggests Envestnet's interest in Yodlee, which it agreed to acquire Monday, was stoked by Yodlee's development of alternative data sources, which helps investment firms find clues about spending trends. An American Banker article points out the merger also combines wealth management with personal financial management, believing the two sides combined can better fight back against robo-advisers.
So much for that effort to expand mortgage access to riskier borrowers. Quarterly earnings reports from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac show the credit scores of loans for which they provide guarantees are higher so far this year, compared to last year. The Journal acknowledged one factor driving up credit scores is people with better credit histories tend to be more likely to refinance, and refinancing activity has been high this year. But many lenders have been publicly saying they're trying hard to expand mortgage access, so one would expect the credit-score data to reflect that. The reason? The CFPB and the Justice Department are lurking, which scares lenders away from making loans to groups that might get them into trouble "When I meet with lenders, it's very clear that there's great concern about the legal and regulatory enforcement from any number of players at the federal and state level," Fannie Mae CEO Tim Mayopoulos said.
Financial Times
It doesn't seem possible that a bank not named Union County Savings Bank or Carter Bank & Trust would still be operating in the year 2015 without a mobile banking app. But until this summer, that was the case with C. Hoare & Co., the oldest private bank in the United Kingdom. C. Hoare, which was founded in 1672, recently sent a letter to customers to tell them it would soon "scan all paperwork and modernise 300 years of working practices."
