Opinions

The Federal Reserve's April financial stability report found that asset valuations remain elevated, even as investors are beginning to demand more compensation for risk amid rising uncertainty around monetary policy.

Banking groups that sued the state of Illinois over its law barring banks from charging interchange fees on taxes and tips cheered an appeals court ruling remanding the law to a lower court and vowed to keep the law going into effect, which is slated for July 1.

Almost 60 SBA loans originated by Community Bank & Trust — West Georgia were classified as noncurrent, according to Small Business Administration records. Last week, Community became the second U.S. bank to fail in 2026.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, warned in a letter to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency Thursday that its proposed rollback leaves regional banks dangerously unsupervised.

The measure, sent Thursday to the governor's desk, would mark the second state ban on interchange fees and could inform an ongoing bank-led legal challenge to a similar Illinois law.

Fincen just proposed the most significant reform to AML compliance in a generation, but its reporting forms are still broken. A handful of key changes would meaningfully reduce compliance burden without reducing investigative value.

Public comments on the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's GENIUS Act implementing regulations highlighted the rift between banks and crypto firms over the permissibility of yield on stablecoin holdings, an issue that has stalled crypto market structure legislation for months.

The Justice Department retreated from its plan to appeal a judge's ruling blocking grand jury subpoenas in the Powell probe, opting instead for a softer legal maneuver that keeps the investigation's future uncertain.

Two U.S. banks have failed so far in 2026, continuing the recent pattern of smaller lenders collapsing abruptly due to firm-specific issues. January's failure of Metropolitan Capital Bank & Trust and the early May failure of Community Bank & Trust – West Georgia both fit that mold.