Law and regulation

Top Federal Reserve Board officials, including Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, believe it is best to carry out the current reform process to solve the "too big to fail" issue, but are ready to significantly increase capital standards if the problem persists.

In a speech Wednesday, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Martin Gruenberg moved closer to the views of other top officials who have already backed a higher ratio, and provided an update on global coordination of resolution plans.

Central Arizona Bank, a unit of Capitol Bancorp, was set to be shut down with two sister banks last Friday, but a legal challenge bought it a few extra days.

Attorney General Eric Holder tried on Wednesday to walk back earlier comments that some financial institutions are "too big to jail" during a House Judiciary Committee hearing.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid confirmed Wednesday that the chamber will hold a vote to confirm Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sometime next week.

The banking industry must create sustainable mortgage products that will work for responsible families of modest means. We also need a proactive homeownership policy from the federal government.

Margin compression once again overpowered loan growth in the first quarter, sapping banks’ traditional source of revenue.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a court order to the alternative payment provider Dwolla to cease operations with Mt. Gox, the largest Bitcoin exchange, which it accuses of operating as an unlicensed money transmitter.

The heart of the issue is not who holds what titles, but whether a company’s governance processes are functioning as they should.

A modified version of Ed DeMarco’s securities-based model for housing finance reform could promote an active market for risk-sharing arrangements and further reduce systemic risk by distributing credit risk broadly.

State regulators seized a third bank unit of Capitol Bancorp., $31.6 million-asset Central Arizona Bank in Scottsdale, Ariz, in a rare Tuesday failure.

Top Federal Reserve Board officials appear to have reached a consensus on how to deal with the "too big to fail" dilemma: wait for the current reform process to play out, but be ready to significantly increase capital standards if the problem remains unsolved.

A new report from the Bipartisan Policy Center backs the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s "single-point-of-entry" strategy, but says congressional changes to the bankruptcy code could also do the trick.

The Federal Reserve Board said that eighteen of the largest U.S. bank holding companies will release partial results of their midyear stress tests to regulators on July 5.

The top GOP lawmaker on the Senate Banking Committee, Sen. Mike Crapo, is requesting more information about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's data collection practices, claiming that the agency has been "evasive."

Accept the limitations of quantification exercises. Management should focus on identifying and mitigating risks that alone or in combination could cause a bank to fail.

The central bank is too big, too leveraged, extremely short-funded and a frequent creator through its interest rate and money-printing actions of gigantic systemic risk.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren renewed her inquiry Tuesday into whether government officials have conducted any analysis into the trade-offs of settling an enforcement action without requiring an admission of guilt versus going to trial.

The bill would replace the misleading risk-based capital system with a straightforward way to determine the true health of an institution, in addition to providing incentives for the largest banks to downsize.

A senior U.S. regulatory official said Tuesday that global policymakers charged with adopting higher capital and liquidity requirements are gradually inching toward implementation.