Regulation

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.

The three asset management firms are among those attempting to discount the credibility of a report released by the Office of Financial Research last month that argued such companies potentially pose a threat to the economy.

The Treasury Department is taking a roughly 45% discount its latest auction of Troubled Asset Relief Program shares.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which is designed to have five members regulate trading by banks, could instead have only one Democrat and one Republican early next year. The split would probably delay votes on contentious Dodd-Frank Act regulations.

Harvey Rosenblum, the former director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, has cultivated one of the most public profiles among rank-and-file regulators in the "too big to fail" debate. In an interview with editor-at-large Barbara Rehm, he let loose– and his views might surprise you.