Policy & Regulation

Former President Bill Clinton told some of Wall Street's top executives that fines levied against banks in connection with the financial crisis should be used to fund infrastructure improvements in the U.S.

The 2008 financial crisis forced the Fed and Treasury into a too-cozy relationship and the Dodd-Frank law cemented it. Janet Yellen should use her confirmation hearing this week to reassert the central bank’s independence from the administration, argues editor-at-large Barbara Rehm

Fidelity Investments, BlackRock Inc. and PIMCO were among more than two dozen firms, industry stakeholders and lawyers that filed letters in an effort to discount the credibility of a report released by the Office of Financial Research labeling asset management firms as systemically important.

The Financial Stability Board lowered the proposed surcharge on globally systemically-important banks for Citigroup and Bank of New York Mellon, leaving JPMorgan Chase as the only U.S. institution to face the highest 2.5% capital buffer.

The proposed treatment of mortgage securities and associated mortgage financing activities will constrain the sector while handicapping efforts to bring private capital back to the secondary market.

JPMorgan Chase is weighing whether to ban traders from using electronic chat rooms to communicate with peers at other firms as the forums draw scrutiny from global regulators, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

Baycorp, a New Zealand-based collection agency, is refunding debtors $3.5 million after a settlement with the country's Commerce Commission.

Bankers do not select the people who regulate them. To work, our system requires smart and prudent regulators as much as it requires smart and prudent bankers. Confirmation hearings should help us find out if Janet Yellen will be such a regulator.

Under Timothy Geithner, the U.S. Treasury dismissed the notion that the biggest banks remained too big to fail. His successor, Jack Lew, initially showed signs of toeing a similar line, but since taking over as Treasury Secretary has displayed a "significant change in attitude," says Neil Barofsky the former inspector general of the Troubled Asset Relief Program and author of Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street.

New York Fed President William Dudley is suggesting that regulators could force banks to withhold a big chunk of executives' annual pay and then use that money to fill holes in capital when trouble hits.