Politics

A bipartisan bill offered Monday by Senate Banking Committee member Katie Britt, R-Ala., and Andy Kim, D-N.J., would force the Securities and Exchange Commission to update a 25-year-old threshold that holds small financial firms to higher regulatory standards.

Senate Banking Committee ranking member Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., led a group of congressional Democrats in a letter to bank regulators telling them that loosening capital rules wouldn't improve the Treasury market's functioning.

The CDFI Fund is updating definitions of eligible activity to be considered for the funds, including removing climate-focused financing and references to race and ethnicity.

In its recently passed bill, Congress prohibited stablecoin issuers from offering interest, but left the door open to "rewards" from exchanges. That provision could drive adoption of stablecoins and compete for deposits, but experts say the technology would have a long way to go.

The embattled regulator has dropped more than half its Biden-era docket, including cases against Apple and U.S. Bank. But insiders at the bureau say that's just the beginning.

We don't need to reinvent banking to support cannabis. But we do need a clear, federally coordinated compliance framework tailored to the sector. That means establishing uniform standards.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau received pointed pushback from banks in their public comments on a proposed rule that would slash the number of nonbanks being supervised in four key markets.

There's no designated lender of last resort for nonbank stablecoin issuers in either the recently-passed stablecoin bill or the crypto market structure bill being considered, which experts say could mean bailouts down the road.

Excluded from the stablecoin revolution by law, banks deserve the opportunity to participate in the evolution of digital finance. Regulatory clarity on the treatment of tokenized deposits is an essential first step.