PayThink

Two wide-ranging regulatory proposals from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, which so far have received scant attention, could put the brakes on implementation of the Dodd-Frank Act.

The ability of regulators to seize and unwind a failing large company — the very heart of the Dodd-Frank Act — is caught in a crossfire. Stuck in the middle? The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

If very different lines of business are walled off from one another, conflicts of interest and risk can be mitigated without losing any of the benefits of one-stop banking.

Eminent domain is a well-meaning bid to help individual homeowners, but it also would raise borrower credit costs and undermine efforts to inject private capital back into mortgage markets.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has proposed new requirements for mortgage servicers “to provide clear monthly statements, earlier disclosures for interest rate adjustments and options to help borrowers avoid foreclosures and costly force-placed insurance,” writes American Banker’s Kate Berry.

We don't need and shouldn't have one-size-fits-all regulatory policies. Community banks are different from their larger U.S. counterparts.

As the banking industry and Wall Street gear up for the impending reforms under Dodd-Frank, it is wise to cast an eye toward the rules for trade reporting and clearing for over-the-counter derivatives, lest they catch you unaware.

Restoring Glass-Steagall would be a palliative just like the Volcker rule: simple to say, hard to do. Even under the 1933 law, financial innovators blurred the lines between commercial and investment banking — almost from the very start.

Last month, in its enforcement action against Capital One, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau collected the first money going into the Civil Penalty Fund.

No digital wallet can reach ubiquity if it is limited to big-box stores. Mobile solutions have to percolate down at the local coffee shop as well, where they can become part of the customer's daily grind.