Policy & Regulation

Lawmakers blasted senior officials at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Tuesday, arguing they were too rigid with recently finalized mortgage rules that could choke off access to credit.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Starbucks Corp. are among 19 retailers opting out of a $7.25 billion antitrust settlement with Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. over fees charged to merchants to process credit-card transactions.

A public rift is emerging among some of the Democratic attorneys general who forged the 49-state mortgage settlement with five major banks over how aggressively to enforce servicing standards.

Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said Tuesday that lawmakers should hold off on further legislative reforms to the financial system until Dodd-Frank is fully implemented, echoing recent remarks from top Federal Reserve Board officials and large bank executives.

Until a mechanism to shut the biggest and baddest is well in place, the prospect of taxpayer bailout will distort financial markets and handicap competitors.

The Fed on May 15 lifted a 2009 written agreement that barred the $326 million-asset Tysan from taking on debt or repurchasing stock without regulatory approval.

The Oregon Senate has passed a bill banning private collection companies from using official government letterhead - namely that of district attorneys - to threaten bad check writers with jail.

For all their analytic complexity, the Basel capital standards simplemindedly view each type of risk in isolation. In reality, an increase in one type of risk may lower another.

The swap execution facility regime in Dodd-Frank, once championed as the magic pill to cure the problems in the derivatives market, is turning out to be less potent than hoped.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid plans to hold a long-awaited vote later this week on the confirmation of Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. With the opposition GOP planning to block the nomination, the move is a rehash of past battles and a sign that politics is once again trumping pragmatism in bank policymaking, argues Washington Bureau Chief Rob Blackwell. Ironically, the Republican's opposition will keep the CFPB focused largely on banks, rather than on their nonbank rivals, and could end up doing their banker friends more harm than good.