Politics

President Joe Biden is expected to lean in on banking issues such as credit card late fees and overdraft fees Thursday evening in his annual address to Congress. However, he likely will avoid the topic of financial-sector stability, even amid a private-sector rescue of New York Community Bancorp.

In congressional testimony, the Federal Reserve chair said the Board of Governors is processing the comments on its capital reform proposal. Putting forth an entirely new proposal is "very plausible."

A blizzard of new rules and regulations strikes at the fundamental strengths of the U.S. banking system, and will have negative impacts on both American consumers and businesses.

In 2023, the Biden administration pledged to reduce "junk fees." Ahead of this year's State of the Union, we revisit what progress has been made.

The letter, which was sent to bank regulators, represents a further escalation of lawmaker criticism of the Basel III endgame proposal, and comes just as Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is set to testify in the House Financial Services Committee.

The failures of several midsize banks last year demonstrated shortcomings in the deposit insurance framework and lit a fire among policymakers to take it on. But for some reason that fire went out.

The chair of the House Financial Services Committee called the last resort lending facility "a generation behind" broader capital markets. He said modernization should be part of the Federal Reserve's response to last year's bank failures.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will release a final rule Tuesday that is expected to save consumers $10 billion a year in credit card late fees. The rule is part of a larger effort by the White House to crack down on illegal fees and price hikes that President Biden will address in the State of the Union.

Critics argue the Federal Home Loan Bank System earned record profits last year and should provide a public benefit commensurate with the perks to members.

In a 31 to 20 vote, the House Financial Services Committee voted to advance a resolution disapproving of a Securities and Exchange Commission accounting bulletin that banks say would undercut their ability to custody crypto.

Six financial institutions may be placed on West Virginia's restricted list if they are found "boycott" the fossil fuel industry, Riley Moore said.

A White House executive order mandates that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other federal agencies take steps to protect personal information from getting into the hands of "countries of concern." The CFPB is promising rules to rein in data sharing later this year.

Rep. Maxine Waters, ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, led the letter, spurred by the recent merger announcement between Capital One and Discover, which the letter said would enable the merged company "to influence multiple points of the marketplace."

Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr said in a speech Tuesday that banks might need to establish margin to counteract counterparty risks presented by private funds.

The lawmakers, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said the deal would further anti-consumer bank consolidation, but also criticized the OCC's proposed changes to the merger process, asking that they be strengthened.

The Narrow Bank — a pass-through bank that first applied for a Federal Reserve master account in 2017 — is appealing an "ill-founded" December decision by the Federal Reserve to deny its application for a master account.

The agency's rule represents real progress, but applying it to more kinds of accounts and making other common-sense changes would increase its already significant benefits to consumers.

Some analysts said that the Capital One-Discover deal would undercut the reasoning behind the Credit Card Competition Act — authored by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. — which aims to spur competition for Visa and Mastercard.

The blockbuster merger proposal will be reviewed at a time when the Biden administration is expressing skepticism about consolidation. Its analysis will have to account for markets dominated by both big banks and the likes of Visa and Mastercard.

It won't be easy, but implementing a common-sense overhaul of how we measure banks' liquidity would help avoid the kind of crisis we experienced in 2023.