Regulation

According to experts, the ethics questions raised by House lawmakers about Raj Date, the former No. 2 at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who left to form his own firm, appear to be based on "faulty information."

Lawmakers have accused Raj Date, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's former No. 2, of lobbying his old employer and profiting from a mortgage rule he wrote. Yet ethics experts, and even some of those who formerly accused him of wrongdoing, now say the charges are bogus.

HSBC, Europe's largest lender, said possible damages from a lawsuit filed by a U.S. regulator over improperly sold mortgage-backed securities could cost the bank as much as $1.6 billion.

The Federal Reserve Board's Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey said credit conditions are improving for commercial and industrial loans but standards remain tight on mortgages and consumer debt.

Even if the Federal Reserve Board does not backtrack sharply on its debit-fee cap as a result of last week's court ruling, the legal battle has created fresh uncertainty that may have some U.S. issuers questioning their long-term strategy.

The $22.5 billion Structured Agency Credit Risk transaction serves its purpose, but shows how much more work and thinking needs to be done to redesign the housing finance system.

President Obama has nominated J. Christopher Giancarlo to serve on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Karen Dynan to serve as assistant Treasury secretary for economic policy.

A Bitcoin conference in New York last week drew a motley crowd. There were the expected wide-eyed believers in the digital currency, earnest entrepreneurs building Bitcoin-related businesses, and somewhat more skeptical venture capitalists — but also traditional banking lawyers and anti-money laundering compliance consultants whose services are in hot demand. Startup executives complained about the difficulty of getting (or keeping) bank accounts and state money transmitter licenses. But the technology shows great promise and demonstrates that it is possible to send money as fast and as cheaply as email, even if banks running on legacy systems cannot.

WASHINGTON — Regulators seized a $265 million-asset bank based in Fort Myers, Fla., late Friday and sold its operations in a deal protecting all of the failed bank's depositors.

While the Obama administration has publicly kept its distance from the housing finance reform debate during the past two years, it has been privately working in recent months to help move a bill forward.