Opinions

Marking its official exit from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, Regions Financial (RF) in Birmingham announced Wednesday that it has repurchased the warrant it sold to the Treasury Department as part of the program.

The gods of irony must be alive and well at American Banker. It's hard to think of a better explanation for the April 30 tirade against "deadbeats" from Andrew Kahr — whose approach to the credit business was described this way in a front-page San Francisco Chronicle news story in 2002:

A small sliver of the Fed's massive proposal to enhance supervision of the largest banks spells out exactly what enterprise-wide risk management should look like. It may be the single best shot at preventing another financial crisis.

In a letter to the FHFA, Republicans in Congress highlighted the potential downsides of allowing write-downs.

Recently, the issue of a lender's authority and right to pursue foreclosure on defaulted residential mortgage loans has become a subject of national interest. It is at the heart of the $25 billion settlement agreed to recently between the Federal government, 49 state attorneys general and the nation's five largest loan servicers.

In a speech, Federal Reserve Board Governor Daniel Tarullo stressed the need for regulators to implement a set of regulatory reform efforts to help allay risks of future government bailouts.

The Fed's counterparty limit is not so much a banking rule as an indirect antitrust rule. It will create opportunities for smaller institutions to compete. That's the real reason terrified big-bank CEOs are meeting with Fed Governor Tarullo.

Patricia Geoghegan, the Special Master for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, talks about pay determinations for the largest remaining Tarp companies, the office's lasting legacy and the ongoing debate about compensation.

A study released Tuesday by the Federal Reserve Board showed that interchange fees are lower, but the savings were not passed on to consumers.

House Democrats turned up the heat on the Federal Housing Finance Agency by releasing documents that shed additional light on an aborted plan to test principal reductions at Fannie Mae in 2010.