Politics

Efforts to exclude crypto firms from the provision of a number of different core financial services are doomed to fail. The only correct response is to provide the prudential regulation necessary to assure safe and sound operation.

A significant majority of Americans are now living lives of permanent financial stress, and debt delinquency is on the rise. For bankers, that's a recipe for problems with profitability, and perhaps with safety and soundness.

Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould said Friday afternoon that regulators should scale back what he characterized as costly and ineffective bank-prepared resolution plans and shifting resolution responsibility onto bank regulators. 

Warren, Wyden, Whitehouse, Welch and Schatz say the administration's memo contradicts public statements, and they want more answers on whether the administration is working with top U.S. banks to funnel money out of the South American nation.

White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said Friday that the administration expects banks to voluntarily issue "Trump cards" with 10% rate caps, a move that could quell Congress' moves to impose a cap through legislation — but that's no guarantee.

Data collected by the Conference of State Bank Supervisors demonstrates a huge disparity in compliance costs between large and small banks. Policymakers in Washington who claim to support community banks must act to reduce regulatory burden.

Stablecoin yield has continued to be a flashpoint as bank groups look for a blanket ban on crypto exchanges and other nonbanks offering yield-like rewards for holding crypto.

A week after President Trump demanded a 10% cap on credit card interest rates, top executives at big banks protested the idea in blunt terms.

The heads of two associations representing military-serving financial institutions argue that the Credit Card Competition Act, as well as the president's demand for credit card rate cuts, would harm troops by reducing access to credit.

The bank, which has ties to prominent right-wing political figures, is touting its intention to embed cryptocurrency into loans, deposits and investment offerings.

President Trump Tuesday told reporters he would not delay announcing his pick to fill a new vacancy on the Federal Reserve Board despite threats from Republican Senators to block any Fed nomination until a recently-disclosed Justice Department investigation into Fed Chair Jerome Powell is resolved.

President Donald Trump said that lawmakers should support legislation that would require credit cards issued by most large banks to offer merchants the choice between two unaffiliated card networks, one of which cannot be Visa or Mastercard.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday morning that consumer prices rose 0.3% in December, with annual inflation stuck at 2.7%, lending credence to the Federal Reserve's cautious stance toward interest rates heading into 2026.

Financial markets took a tumble Monday morning after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell announced that he was the subject of a Justice Department inquiry concerning the central bank's headquarters renovation. Lawmakers and former Fed officials decried the move as political intimidation.

Continuing to retreat from Biden-era rules, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Department of Justice withdrew a 2023 advisory opinion that had cautioned about denying credit to immigrants.

A report from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, released Thursday found that most sudden account closures were spurred by supervisory pressure rather than political or religious bias on the part of the banks, a finding that is at odds with the White House's framing of the issue.

Following President Trump's aggressive bank deregulation agenda, the FDIC and OCC, and occasionally the increasingly politicized Fed, are in a race to slash compliance requirements. Bankers should remember that the pendulum can always swing back.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank has been served grand jury subpoenas and been threatened with criminal indictment, moves he called "pretexts" to influence interest rates through "political pressure or intimidation."

As the Federal Reserve's quantitative tightening efforts fade into history, the major engine of economic growth in the U.S. will be bank lending. Regulators should keep a close eye on where those dollars are going.

President Trump's concept, which is framed as a potential bipartisan effort, could mean a new route to a goal Dems targeted via foreclosure sale restrictions.