Regulation

Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry sought to reassure community bankers this week that the agency does not expect them to comply with its "heightened expectations" proposal aimed at bolstering risk management and improving governance at the biggest banks.

Banks are continuing to try to game capital ratios and regulatory standards that are intended to make the financial industry safer and simpler, according to Anat Admati. The Stanford finance professor and co-author of "The Bankers' New Clothes" discusses the successes and failures of regulation and banks' risk-management in recent months.

WASHINGTON — A top House Financial Services Committee lawmaker said Thursday that he will subpoena Consumer Financial Protection Bureau officials if they again refuse to testify about allegations of employee discrimination and retaliation.

A bipartisan group of senators announced a deal Thursday to reauthorize and extend the country's terrorism risk insurance program, to be taken up by the Banking Committee in coming weeks.

Banks are likely to protest new Basel rules that would require them to hold more capital against their exposure to central counterparties, but the standard is necessary to prevent the fast-growing counterparties from becoming "too big to fail."

More than a year into his leadership atop the powerful banking panel, it's still unclear whether Rep. Jeb Hensarling is willing to trade his ideological beliefs for the messy reality that is dealmaking in today's Congress.

Ties between presidents and top bankers have loosened over time as armies of handlers have intervened. The result is a system in which the bankers' sense of civic duty has weakened, even as the concentration of assets in their hands has come to pose mounting systemic risk. That's according to Nomi Prins, author of All the Presidents' Bankers.

In a victory for banks, global financial regulators revised rules governing how much money must be set aside to cover losses by swaps traders, backing away from guidelines that firms warned would destabilize the $693 trillion derivatives market.

Regulators look at eight risk categories when determining a bank's health, but it's how banks deal with three in particular — interest rate risk, liquidity risk and IT/operational risk -- that could make or break them.

Bill Demchak, PNC's chief executive, gives a candid and detailed interview on a range of subjects, from the CFPBs crackdown on indirect auto lending (misguided, in his view) to the Fed's proposed Basel liquidity rule to housing finance reform.