Law and regulation

Low-risk reinsurance vehicles amounted to illegal payoffs, the HUD Inspector General's office found in 2009. But the Department of Justice hasn't acted on the case referred by to it by HUD investigators.

Rep. Brad Miller says the overseer of Fannie and Freddie is to be commended for seeking to minimize taxpayer losses.

Is it worth delaying a bottoming-out of the housing market, and allowing some delinquent borrowers to freeload for a time, in order to prevent the rare but documented instances of someone being wrongly foreclosed on?

Senate Banking Committee members remain far more worried about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's governance than its prospective leader.

The FDIC has terminated its consent order against Clarkston State Bank in Michigan after the bank recapitalized with investments from private citizens and current board members and made improvements in managing its loan portfolio.

In New Zealand, three Hells Angels' gang members were among four men arrested last week in an operation to target unlawful debt collections.

Dodd-Frank gives the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau the authority to prohibit abusive practices, but just what does "abusive" mean? Banks and their lawyers are struggling to figure it out.

The federal agency that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac filed lawsuits Friday against 17 financial institutions, including some of the largest American banks, alleging that they made misrepresentations when they sold private-label mortgage-backed securities to Fannie and Freddie.

A single acquirer picked up the operations of two failed Georgia banks late Friday in a deal costing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. nearly $72 million.

The state attorneys general have a secret weapon in their negotiations with the largest mortgage servicers: the results of a HUD investigation into the banks' robo-signing practices.

Investor's stake in the future of Bank of America shows a boldness that banks now lack.

Regulators have pushed Bank of America Corp. to show what measures it could take if conditions worsen for the Charlotte, N.C., lender, according to people familiar with the situation.

The Treasury Department said Thursday that it did not pay any incentives for foreclosure prevention efforts to Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. in the second quarter, as the two banks still need "substantial improvement" in their mortgage servicing operations. But Wells Fargo & Co. did make the cut.

In the Dodd-Frank Act, Congress included an exemption from the five percent risk-retention requirements applied to residential mortgages. Unfortunately, in their proposal to define what qualifies as a "qualified residential mortgage" under that exemption, regulators included only a very narrow test of borrowers' credit risk.

The deals announced Tuesday paved the way for Goldman's sale of its Litton subsidiary to Ocwen Loan Servicing. Both Goldman and Ocwen agreed to reforms in response of allegations of loan-servicing improprieties.

The Federal Reserve Board's decision to hold public hearings and extend the comment period on Capital One Financial Corp.'s planned acquisition of ING Direct has drawn the ire of House Financial Services Chairman Spencer Bachus.

Cullen/Frost Bankers Chief Executive Dick Evans says he's "not interested" in making acquisitions outside of Texas, and derides mounting competitive threats from community bank rivals by comparing them to the "juvenile delinquents down the street."

Banks of all sizes are tackling changes in regulations such as RESPA. Bank of Billings is using loan documentation compliance software to meet the challenge.

The Federal Trade Commission is mailing more than 110,000 refund checks to consumers defrauded by an online operation that tricked payday loan applicants into paying for an unrelated debit card.

The international coordinating body for financial regulation announced Thursday that it has approved an initial set of recommendations for various countries to use to strengthen the oversight of their shadow banking systems.