Regulation

Merchants may feel overwhelmed at the abundance of new payment technologies, and they are understandably worried about investing in the wrong one. Terminal vendors are hoping to address those fears.

In a report released Thursday, the Government Accountability Office flagged concerns about the rising use of appraisal management companies as well as the government's oversight of the appraisal industry.

PNC Bank reached a $90 million settlement this week in a class-action lawsuit over excessive overdraft fees, the latest of several big banks to do so.

Though loan competition remains fierce, most banks are unwilling to relax their underwriting policies until the economy heals.

Much time and energy was spent on a campaign to regulate an optional service consumers could avoid paying for. Meanwhile, mortgage securitization was going gangbusters. Priorities were perhaps misplaced.

A government watchdog has found that the Federal Home Loan banks increasingly turned to offering short-term, unsecured credit to financial institutions exposed to the turmoil in Europe as their own core business dwindled.

The Treasury Department will receive roughly $204 million from its latest auctions selling off the preferred shares of seven financial institutions from the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

John C. Dugan, former comptroller of the currency, and T. Timothy Ryan Jr., former director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, insist that, despite some recent assertions to the contrary, the Dodd-Frank Act really does put end to the too-big-to-fail status of big banks.

During the boom, accounting rules kept banks from building thicker buffers against losses. This left them in a weaker position when the crisis hit. It's time to fix the mistake.

Dodd-Frank-required study finds borrowers are younger and seniors are increasingly taking out bigger loans.