Politics

As the private credit market swells, federal regulators and lawmakers continue to debate how and whether to apply oversight and heightened scrutiny to the market. But whether anything happens depends on whether President Biden wins a second term.

A recent white paper from former Federal Reserve Gov. Daniel Tarullo suggests that the stress testing regime should be decoupled from bank capital requirements. But if stress testing isn't an effective means of assigning minimum regulatory capital levels, what is?

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Monday completed its rule establishing a nationwide database for a wide swath of financial companies — including payments companies, debt collectors, auto lenders — that have faced regulatory or legal penalties for consumer-related infractions.

A bill to draw crypto's jurisdictional lines between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is pitting increasingly crypto-friendly Democrats against consumer protection hawks in the Senate.

In this month's roundup of top banking news: a Supreme Court ruling on CFPB funding, TD Bank's money laundering woes, an FDIC workplace probe reveals a culture of misconduct and more.

Numisma, a Connecticut-chartered uninsured bank, was granted a Federal Reserve master account last week — the first bank with a novel charter to do so since the Fed issued its master account guidelines in 2022. Whether others can do the same is an open question.

A former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau senior counsel argues that the agency needs to renew its focus on institution-building, in order to create a stable foundation on which the financial services industry, as well as its own employees, can rely.

The announcement comes after weeks of criticism from the bureau's director over fees including title insurance and credit scores.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s Quarterly Banking Profile for Q1 showed that banks' net income margins got a boost, but FDIC Chair Martin Gruenberg said concerns around inflation, interest rate volatility and geopolitical uncertainty could mean tougher quarters ahead.

The Illinois state legislature, as part of an agreement with retailers to raise state tax revenue, passed a budget bill that would bar the collection of interchange fees on sales taxes, excise taxes and tips for transactions that would be subject to Illinois sales taxes.

Beth Hammack, who stepped down as the bank's co-head of global finance earlier this year, will take the helm as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland later this summer following the retirement of longtime President Loretta Mester.

In a speech, the Federal Reserve governor said she would have liked to see the Federal Open Market Committee move more quickly to reduce its holdings. The central bank is poised to begin slowing the pace of balance sheet runoff this week.

Regulators are inherently cautious, but they must not allow concerns about risk to blind them to the enormous opportunities artificial intelligence presents for the financial well-being of Americans.

Numisma Bank, a de novo bank backed by former Federal Reserve Vice Chair Randal Quarles, is the first bank without deposit insurance to be granted conditional approval under the Fed's new master account application framework.

House Financial Services Committee Chair Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., told Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Martin Gruenberg to make himself available for a June 12 hearing on the agency's workplace culture.

The bill includes a provision that would codify Republicans' and the banking industry's complaints with a Securities and Exchange Commission measure that banks say would bar them from custodying crypto assets.

FDIC chair Martin Gruenberg's departure from the agency may have political implications as the White House and Senate scramble to name a successor, but experts agree that the move will likely result in a weaker Basel rule and stronger role for the Federal Reserve in joint rulemakings.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a new interpretive rule designating buy now/pay later lenders as credit card providers, subjecting those services to consumer protections like the right to dispute charges and receive refunds.

The bill spells out how the Securities and Exchange Commission can and can't address crypto custody at banks and is getting a wave of bipartisan traction on Capitol Hill. But some academics and consumer advocates are concerned that the legislation could allow banks to bypass regulations.

Getting appointees confirmed by the Senate can be a time-consuming and painstaking process in ideal circumstances, and doing it in an election year amid a scandal is far from ideal. Even so, the White House and Senate Democrats should be motivated to move fast.