Law and regulation

The Federal Housing Administration announced three steps Friday to protect its mortgage insurance fund from sustaining further losses.

The Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, two bills that would have relied on payment companies to block funding to websites accused of content theft, were put on hold Friday.

The FDIC and a Federal Home Loan bank are seeking information from the Memphis bank about 20 securitizations, executives said. First Horizon swung to a profit and reported lower revenue in the fourth quarter.

President Obama assured that 2012 would get off to a rousing start when he made a recess appointment of Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Predictably, the appointment generated both praise and outrage.

A new survey shows that bankers are surprisingly satisfied with their institutions' examiners and exams.

Frivolously adding armor to combat planes makes the aircraft difficult to control and less effective. Weighting down banks with ill-conceived risk mitigation strategies and regulations serves the interests of neither individual banks nor the banking system as a whole.

President and CEO of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Cincinnati David Hehman announced plans to retire in June. Andrew Howell, executive vice president and chief operating officer, will take his place.

A Chief Risk Officer can now have significant stature and sway. But that new prominence gives shareholders, regulators, and the media an easy target for ridicule after a corporate stumble.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau revealed details Thursday about how it plans to examine payday lenders, while Director Richard Cordray said it will move immediately to stop certain practices.

Robert Menendez and three House Democrats are asking the Government Accountability Office to assess whether there are conflicts of interest between banks and the third-party auditors that are reviewing their foreclosure practices.

Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown is urging federal and state officials not to reach a settlement that allows banks to pass the costs on to investors in mortgage-backed securties.

Glacier Bancorp Inc. in Kalispell, Mont., is planning to collapse its 11 bank subsidiaries into a single commercial bank in a move aimed at streamlining its operations and lowering its overall compliance costs.

A California man pleaded guilty to federal charges of money laundering, mail and wire fraud in connection with a collection agency scam he ran in the state that bilked $2.7 million from customers of clients.

Here we go again. A series of uncoordinated government policies are once more setting up the U.S. banking system for major losses and possibly another financial crisis.

House Democrats who hope to see reductions in mortgage principal as a way to stimulate the economy are turning up the heat on the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

The regulators charged with implementing the Volcker Rule have posed a whopping 1,300 questions to the public, but on Wednesday they fielded one query they seemingly hadn't considered.

The GOP front-runner's record is a mix of free-market principles and deep pragmatism. He supported Tarp in 2008, opposes government intervention in foreclosures, and is less rigid than other Republicans on the question of future bank bailouts.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton outlined his plan for lenders before a standing-room-only crowd at the NRF show this week in New York. Clinton asked banks to lower mortgage values and interest rates in exchange for a share of the money earned for selling the home in a recovered market.

A group of state associations, led by Utah, has developed an electronic, anonymous survey bankers complete after each exam. The survey is already helping the industry pinpoint points of agreement and discord between banks and their examiners.

Before changes are made to money fund regulation there should be a full assessment of the SEC’s enhancements to its oversight of funds, as well as a searching inquiry into the potential impact of any of the proposed reforms on investors, on issuers of commercial paper, and on the economy as a whole.