Regulation

Newt Gingrich is surging in Republican presidential polls, but he was still thrown last week by a tough question at a recent debate from CNBC's John Harwood.

As in other East Coast cities, residents of the capital have had to adapt to a growing chill in the air. But the change was a little more abrupt for those at Thursday's nomination hearing for the Senate Banking Committee.

Republican Rep. Shelley Moore Capito and Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney team up on a measure that would give banks the right to appeal examination decisions.

Republican Scott Brown tapped into anger with Washington to capture a U.S. Senate seat in 2010. Elizabeth Warren, a consumer advocate and Harvard law professor, is wagering on public disgust with Wall Street to help Democrats win it back in 2012

Consumer groups are banding together to urge the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to require prepaid debit card issuers to provide consumers with the same mandatory protections that come with traditional debit cards under Regulation E of the Electronic Funds Transfer Act.

Addressing the home mortgage meltdown, Congressman Scott Garrett recently introduced legislation that is, as American Banker put it, "designed to draw the private sector back to the secondary-mortgage market after the troubled GSEs are terminated."

Banks, the FDIC, and insurers are set to fight over whether the vague terms of director & officer liability insurance put insurers on the hook for FDIC claims against failed bank execs.

Regulators will eventually release banks from the penalty box of formal enforcement actions. For now, banks can expect informal agreements to serve as a provisional step to freedom.

Shouldn't it be a given that an agency staffed with green examiners and tasked with enforcing new rules will communicate with banks before slapping them with regulatory orders?

In a new paper, Karen Shaw Petrou, a leading financial services analyst, outlines flaws with new capital and liquidity requirements, and offers policymakers a way to simplify the process.