Receiving Wide Coverage ...
Two Tales of A Nation: The deal on debt relief for Greece will remove uncertainty, helping prevent a loss of confidence in banks, said Charles Dallara, the managing director of the Institute of International Finance, the Times reported. Dallara was a negotiator for the deal. The Post reported that Moody's cut Greek debt three notches to Ca and warned that the nation will likely default before stabilizing. Wall Street Journal, Washington Post
Wall Street Journal
TD Ameritrade will discuss acquiring E*Trade at its board meeting Tuesday. While there is no guarantee that TD will pursue E*Trade, "some analysts consider Ameritrade a likely buyer, citing the allure of E*Trade's brokerage clients and the potential overlap of the firm's banking assets with Toronto-Dominion Bank."
Weak interest led to concession on $1.5 billion of commercial mortgage-backed securities sold last week, suggesting "the cost of money for commercial-real-estate borrowers is going to go up and the availability of money will go down."
Lawmakers are beginning to question some of Dodd-Frank's rules about collateral, especially the requirement that it be held in cash or high-quality government securities. The paper quotes from a letter Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., to regulators, "These non-transparent and possibly inefficient rules place our fragile economic recovery at risk while doing little to prevent a future crisis."
Two Florida banks — LandMark Bank and Southshore Community Bank — and Bank of Choice in Greeley, Colo., failed last week. Both Florida banks will be taken over by Tampa's American Momentum Bank, while Bank of Choice will become part of Bank Midwest NA of Kansas City, Mo.
New York Times
An editorial says that Obama's decision to jettison Elizabeth Warren in favor of Richard Cordray is not an encouraging sign that the administration will back the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau over the banking lobby's attempts to fight reform.
Republicans, whose constituency is bankers, not consumers, are trying to cripple the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau, writes Joe Nocera. That explains their aggressive opposition to Elizabeth Warren leading the agency, even though "she has mostly stressed the importance of clear disclosure and easy-to-read contracts."
Liability related to MERS, Mortgage Electronic Registry Systems, is a looming issue for banks in the negotiations with state attorneys general over robo-signings, writes Gretchen Morgenson. Banks probably want a comprehensive relief from liability related to MERS, she writes.
Health care banker Christopher O'Connor has left JPMorgan Chase for Perella Weinberg Partners.
