Law and regulation

JPMorgan Chase & Co. has agreed to pay $88.3 million to settle charges related to apparent violations of economic sanctions dating back to 2005.

The Federal Trade Commission, along with four state attorneys general, has shut down a fraudulent operation that allegedly took advantage of financially distressed consumers by falsely promising them a “guaranteed” $25,000 grant from the federal government.

The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Thomas Hoenig, said there's a limit to how much more the central bank can help the U.S. economy and that the focus should now be on solving the country's fiscal problems.

The Securities and Exchange Commission will meet Wednesday to vote on posing a series of questions to the public on investment companies' use of derivatives, according to a notice on its website.

First Busey Corp. in Champaign, Ill., has received $72.6 million from the Small Business Lending Fund, the largest award to date since the Treasury Department began disbursing funds to community banks last month.

Institutions made more progress this year clearing out the worst of shared corporate loans stemming from the financial crisis, but whether they can translate that into loan expansion is still an open question.

Any broad new plan to refinance mortgages would hold considerable appeal to the Obama administration, and might raise fewer objections than earlier plans did.

The FDIC and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System will soon finalize one of the more significant requirements of the Dodd-Frank Act — the mandate for large banking organizations and systemically important nonbank financial institutions to prepare resolution plans, more commonly known as "living wills."

JPMorgan Chase & Co. has agreed to pay $88.3 million to settle charges related to apparent violations of economic sanctions dating back to 2005.

On Thursday, the Fed published written agreements struck earlier this month with the $119 million-asset Texas Bancshares Inc. in Snyder, Texas, and the $169 million-asset Flagship Financial Group Inc. in Eden Prairie, Minn.

Warren Buffett's $5 billion investment in Bank of America Corp. may boost investor confidence short-term, but over the long haul it will fatten Berkshire's wallet while worsening the bank's troubles.

Broker-dealers don't have to track every message sent through social media — only the ones that relate to business purposes. And unscripted interactions? They can be reported after they occur.

Charles Taylor, the OCC's new deputy head of capital policy, comes from the Pew Project on Financial Reform, which has pushed for interventionist regulation of the sort the agency usually opposes.

The debit card likely will not go the way of the paper check, its role is rapidly transforming, and its days as a single-purpose product are looking increasingly numbered.

Ag banks and superregionals will be on the rise, many community banks and branches will have disappeared, and three mini-financial crises will have occurred, a roundtable of experts said when asked to predict banking in 2036.

The industry's criticism of the agency does not apply when it comes to nonbank supervision.

Small banks continued to withdraw credit from small businesses in the second quarter, but data indicates that large banks opened up the spigot on small business credit cards.

Global custodians have spent decades using bundled fees to mask egregious conflicts of interest and overcharge pension funds, and by extension the taxpayers and public servants who underwrite them.

Andrew Kahr's excellent discussion of how "Systemic Risk Is About Assets, Not Size" rightly focuses on bubble-inflating movements in the aggregate balance sheet of the financial sector. We should expand on three of his insightful points:

It seems everyone in community banking knows the model needs to evolve, but few have any great ideas on how to do it. One thing does seem certain: standing still is not an option.