Law and regulation

WASHINGTON — The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is seeking comments on whether and how to revise Regulation E, which governs implementation of the Electronic Fund Transfer Act.

Former comptroller Eugene Ludwig talks about the competitive threat from unregulated financial firms and why banks should want the new consumer protection bureau to have a permanent director soon.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has closed a loophole that previously allowed individuals to artificially inflate net worth before investing in unregistered securities offerings. Advisors are generally supportive of the change.

Commerce Bancshares Inc.'s banking unit has agreed to pay $18.3 million to settle a class action involving overdraft fees.

The Federal Reserve has fined two banks for violations of the National Flood Insurance Act.

Move now gives public until mid-February to weigh in on Dodd-Frank trading restrictions.

The Housing Policy Council of the Financial Services Roundtable announced last week that it was promoting Paul Leonard, now the council's director of government affairs, to become senior vice president of government affairs.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency Wednesday announced the appointment of Michael Sullivan to become deputy comptroller for risk analysis.

The Federal Trade Commission said Dec. 19 that Jessica Rich will take over the financial practices division in the agency’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.

Today, a highlight of visiting the Treasury Department is seeing the grand Cash Room, a central meeting and function space inside the building that had more direct links with the nation's prosperity in the 1800s, when it operated as sort of a national banker's bank. But these days, money is not the only reason that Treasury is seeing green – or even gold.

Three years after the government put Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on life support, a debate is still raging over how much the GSEs can be blamed for the housing crisis.

Continental Illinois' internal auditors had been documenting the deterioration of underwriting quality. Unfortunately, no one listened.

Examiners are not on same page as their bosses in Washington when it comes to "getting capital to small businesses," says the chairman of a key House subcommittee.

WASHINGTON — Most thrift holding companies will get a two-year phase in period for following Federal Reserve Board reporting requirements while others will initially be exempted, the central bank said Friday.

Consumers soon will be paying more for government-backed mortgages now that the House and Senate have reached a deal extending a payroll tax break for two months.

An outrush of deposits from foreign bank operations in the U.S. has forced them to cut their balance sheets by a fifth since midyear, but they still managed a 3% increase in business loans.

"I'm not sitting here being cautious awaiting some confirmation hearing," the acting director says. "I'm going ahead and doing this the way I think the law frames it."

MutualBank in Muncie, Ind., has received regulatory approval to convert from a federal savings bank to a state commercial bank.

More than 120 House members, most of them Republicans, are asking regulators to push back their schedule for implementing the Volcker rule's restrictions on proprietary trading.

First Midwest Bancorp Inc. in Itasca, Ill., said Thursday that it paid $900,000 to repurchase a warrant it had issued to the Treasury Department as part of its participation in the Troubled Asset Relief Program.