Amid GOP criticism about the Federal Reserve’s focus on climate change issues, Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank is striking the right balance by educating the public about risks to the financial system while not taking actions he says are better left to elected officials.

The pace of the U.S. recovery picked up somewhat in the past two months, sparking price pressures as businesses contended with worker scarcity and rising costs, the Federal Reserve said.

Scams in which a real person’s information is used to create fictitious businesses or individuals have led to $6 billion in credit losses. The Federal Reserve has developed a standard definition for synthetic identity fraud so lenders can distinguish it from traditional identity theft.

The central bank said the proposed measure governing transactions on FedNow — a real-time service expected to be available in 2023 — would be similar to the framework for the current Fedwire Funds Service.

Federal Reserve Vice Chair of Supervision Randal Quarles suggested that the massive influx of reserves stemming from the central bank's COVID-19 response may lead to a recalibration of the supplementary leverage ratio.

The Federal Reserve has privately told Deutsche Bank that its compliance programs aren’t up to snuff, signaling that the scandal-plagued bank is failing to adhere to a number of past accords with U.S. regulators, according to people familiar with the matter.

There’s so much spare cash sloshing around U.S. funding markets that investors are choosing to park almost half a trillion dollars at the central bank — earning absolutely nothing.

The top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, says the Federal Reserve's heightened attention to racial and income inequality amounts to "political advocacy." But Al Piña, the CEO of the Florida Minority Community Reinvestment Coalition, argues that promoting equality is part of the Fed's mission.

The Federal Reserve's Randal Quarles, in testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, sought to fend off criticism from Sen. Elizabeth Warren that the central bank treated with kid gloves some foreign banks under its jurisdiction that later took heavy losses. The hearing also featured a discussion about a new framework for digital assets.

In addressing systemic risks posed by fluctuating cryptocurrency values, the Federal Reserve and other central banks must acknowledge that quantitative easing has driven up the price of digital assets.

While cryptocurrencies could have benefits, they have “not served as a convenient way to make payments, given, among other factors, their swings in value,” said the head of the Federal Reserve. He also detailed imminent Fed research on a central bank digital currency.

Federal Reserve Vice Chair Randal Quarles has made it clear that banks failing to make the transition away from the benchmark rate could face supervisory consequences.

Financial institutions said they needed more time to weigh in on issues such as how they use artificial intelligence for fraud prevention and underwriting.

During the pandemic-induced lockdowns, the Federal Reserve loosened a rule requiring banks to cap certain savings withdrawals at six per month. Some banks have since dropped ceilings and associated fees, while others have stood pat.

Regulators around the world are exploring how to assess banks' exposures to climate change risks. But they'll have to tackle legal, economic and modeling problems that don’t have obvious solutions.

The central bank wants to adopt new rules to state clearly that merchants must have a choice of debit networks for card-not-present transactions.

The Treasury Department announced that Michael Hsu, a senior official at the Federal Reserve, would lead the national bank regulator until a Senate-confirmed comptroller is in place.

The Federal Reserve said its regional banks should consider whether nontraditional financial companies meet the requirements of certain federal statutes and present “undue” risk to the financial system before granting access.

More than a year into the pandemic, with the U.S. economy improving and consumers having paid down debt, bankers are finally loosening the reins in auto lending and credit cards.

A senior White House economic aide said the decision on selecting the next central bank chief will come after a thorough “process.”