Opinions

A Senate committee approved legislation Thursday that would offer some protection from federal authorities to banks and credit unions doing business with state-authorized marijuana merchants.

WASHINGTON — Student Financial Aid Services is facing more than $5.2 million in charges after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau alleged the company illegally signed up consumers for student financial assistance and proceeded to automatically bill them annually.

The debate about how big a bank needs to be before it poses a threat to the economy heated up again Thursday as lawmakers battled over the $50 billion threshold imposed by the Dodd-Frank Act.

The Senate Appropriations Committee approved a bill designed to fund certain government agencies, but which also included a bill by Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala, to provide regulatory relief for community banks.

Ruth Porat wows investors in her first earnings call as Google's CFO while Marianne Lake moves a step closer to running JPMorgan's future calls. Elsewhere, Lynn Tilton bids to move her fraud trial to federal court, Janet Yellen hints at support for raising the SIFI bar and Obama gets ready to nominate another woman for Fed governor.

The SBA's popular 7(a) program has reached its maximum funding authority. Banks may have to decide on providing short-term aid to small businesses that face delays getting loans.

The Senate began debate Thursday on a bill that includes a provision that would cut the dividend that member banks receive from the Federal Reserve System, a measure that banks, regulators and lawmakers alike are calling shortsighted.

Regulators and lawmakers are wrong to focus on bank size as a measure of risk. A far better indicator of bank stability is the riskiness of a bank's assets, as well as which of the bank's sources of funding bear that risk.

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision published criteria to help investors assess the risk of asset-backed securities seven months after it set tougher capital rules on the products.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's new integrated disclosure regulations could pose problems for warehouse line providers along with their mortgage lender clients.