BankThink

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Banks' Capital Restraints: Get smaller, or else. That's the message from the Fed to big banks after the finalization of rules on Monday. The Fed approved a graduated surcharge for globally risky banks and it established capital requirements for GE Capital. Fed Chair Janet Yellen said the capital surcharge rule is designed to reduce the potential for large institutions to fail, or force them to reduce their risk profile. In effect, it...

As new foreign bank regulations push financial institutions to shed risk-weighted assets, companies like Barclays and RBS are reducing their roles in the mortgage-backed securities market. But reduced competition in this sector is bad for liquidity.

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Dodd-Frank, Five Years Later: On the five-year anniversary of Dodd-Frank, Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd sat down for a Q&A session. Dodd said he thinks Too Big to Fail is dead, in part because regulators are forced to "sit down together" at least four times a year to study the landscape. (In an interview with the Financial Times, Frank is adamant TBTF is dead and he disagrees with Sen. Elizabeth Warren's plan...

Financial monitoring is one of the most effective ways to identify human traffickers. That's why it's crucial that banks work closely with law enforcement officials to put a stop to this criminal activity.

Blythe Masters scores one for women in the boardroom, the Fed's Sarah Bloom Raskin is leading a campaign to declassify cyber security info for banks, and Yellen is still at odds with Congress Â-- but at least "the ecomomy doesn't stink."