Regulation

Total lawsuits filed in the U.S. this year citing alleged Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) violations reached 10,402 through mid-October, well ahead of last year's pace when the 10,000 mark was reached on Dec. 1, according to WebRecon LLC, a Grand Rapids, Mich.-based company that tracks the data from the courts.

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley on Thursday sued five national mortgage lenders — Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial — alleging their foreclosure practices were unlawful and deceptive.

The Federal Trade Commission this week is sending an estimated $90,000 in total refunds to 2,900 victims of a company that allegedly marketed worthless debt management services, before being found in contempt for violating a court order barring its activities.

Jimmy Didden of National Capitol doesn't believe that intense regulation of the big banks will make the system or the economy any stronger.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau lacks leadership at the moment, but not direction. Although Elizabeth Warren has left and Richard Cordray has yet to be confirmed, their laundry list is extensive and they're getting down to business.

The CFPB can work to safeguard checking account holders by setting regulations around the disclosure of fees and overdraft options. No matter how uniformity is reached, it will enhance competition and make the market run more efficiently.

Banks launched later in the decade, whose ramps to profitability lagged their predecessors’, provide a cautionary tale about headwinds that can emerge in an unstable economy, and the dangers of piling into a strategy based on brokered deposits and real estate lending.

The roughly 800 banks opened since 2002 have failed at about twice the industrywide pace. But some, including a few that have been repurposed as rollup vehicles, have prospered. The tables here rank the best and worst performers among the de novos of the past decade.

Republican Sen. Richard Shelby is asking for an investigation of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's oversight of MF Global.

The Treasury said Thursday it expects to gain net proceeds of $3.4 million after pricing warrants to purchase shares in Associated Banc-Corp., one of the financial institutions it rescued during the financial crisis.