Law and regulation

The House Financial Services Committee passed a bill to ensure that data given to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will remain confidential. The panel also voted to repeal a controversial section of Dodd-Frank that requires FDIC-insured institutions to spin off their swaps desks.

WASHINGTON–With its nonbank supervision program finally under way, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wants to bring debt collectors and consumer reporting firms under its oversight umbrella.

WASHINGTON — A Federal Reserve Board official came under pressure from senators Thursday to reveal more information about the potential effects of the European debt crisis on the U.S. banking system.

What the former Fed chairman does not tell us, because he cannot, is the name of a single bank that went under and required taxpayer support because of proprietary trading gone bad.

BROCKTON, Mass. — HarborOne CU, New England's second largest credit union, is the latest credit union giant to be considering a conversion to bank, which would be the biggest credit union conversion yet.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a proposal Thursday that would allow the agency to supervise debt collectors and credit reporting agencies, two industries that have had an increasingly important impact on consumers during the recession.

Discover Financial Services, which is facing a government probe over its marketing of credit card insurance-like products, believes its relatively new practices will appease regulators, a top executive said on Thursday.

Perversely, the proposed compliance framework presumes that a banking entity has violated the Volcker Rule unless the entity can prove otherwise.

Large debt collection and credit reporting firms would face federal supervision for the first time under a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposal issued Thursday.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and FDIC Chairman Marty Gruenberg said regulators are seeking to keep community banks vibrant.

Fannie Mae is considering Timothy Mayopoulos, the head of a banking industry trade group and its own general counsel, as possible replacements for departing Chief Executive Michael Williams, according to The Wall Street Journal.

A small restaurant in Park City, Utah, figures to play a big role in determining how card networks prove suspected card data security breaches and whether card processors rightfully can deduct funds from merchant accounts–without telling the merchants–to cover their own network fines for breaches allegedly stemming from a client failing to comply with Payment Card Industry data-security standards.

After a slow start to the year for consumer statute litigation - specifically the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act - all three categories jumped in the second half of January, according to data from U.S. District Courts.

The Center for Responsible Lending was one of 15 organizations on Thursday to receive a MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions.

A two-year inquiry into tri-party repurchase agreements has not figured out how to fully eliminate systemic risk from this arcane market.

Congress has begun to consider ways to enhance the ombudsman programs at the federal financial regulatory agencies. These programs are an especially important part of the regulatory process, and are deserving of thoughtful ways to increase their efficacy.

An industry group's failure to expeditiously reform the workings of one of the repo market is forcing the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to adopt a stronger monitoring role in the sector.

Of the 575 official complaints against Capital One's plan to buy ING Direct, only one stuck: The credit card lender has been a serial screw-up when it comes to getting delinquent borrowers to pay up, the Fed found.

Two leading scholars on executive compensation at banks argued to Congress that proposed new regulations don't go far enough to fix bad incentives.

Waccamaw Bankshares scored a minor victory tied to a 2010 capital infusion, though its president said the result only buys time to explore "strategic alternatives."