Policy & Regulation

American Express rules barring businesses from asking customers to use lower-cost credit cards violate U.S. antitrust law, a federal judge found.

Freddie Mac will return $900 million to the Treasury Department next month, bringing total payments to nearly $21 billion above what it received in federal aid after the 2008 credit crisis.

Two weeks after U.S. bank remittances to Somalia dried up, regulators and lawmakers are making only slow progress at preventing a potential humanitarian crisis.

WASHINGTON — Federal regulators extended the deadline for three nonbank firms considered "systemically important" to submit their revised resolution plans, also known as living wills.

Regulators have long worried about the risks from the underwriting of leveraged loans, but they are now concerned about the potential for broader economic risk from losses on such loans.

Right now, financial institutions are not required to know the identity of the living, breathing person behind accounts owned by legal entities. The beneficial ownership rules proposed by Fincen would help expose money launderers, tax evaders and criminals.

Encouraging the financial industry to explore faster payments is all well and good. Effectively directing it to do so, however, is beyond the Fed's authority.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who forced Wall Street's biggest banks to pay billions in fines for their roles in the subprime mortgage crisis, is pressing for action against executives at those firms, even as he prepares to leave his post.

Banks and industry groups worry that the Financial Stability Board's "total loss absorbing capacity" proposal could disrupt capital formation while reform advocates say the rules could be strengthened even further.

HSBC has spent billions of dollars in compliance and legal costs, but the damaging scandals keep coming. Renewed attention on the problems at its Swiss private bank could fuel the debate about whether banks this size are too big to manage.