News Topic: regulation-reform

Moving to OCC and Fed oversight hasn't been easy for thrifts. Some of the problems have to do with differing priorities among agencies and natural competition among banking regulators. ... Read full article

What's needed are some approaches from outside the industry or government. I'd rather hear Stephen Hawking's views on housing than Shaun Donovan's or Tim Geithner's ... Read full article

The inclination of Congress is to take a pass on the issue of GSE reform until after the election. The problem is that the Treasury support expires in December. ... Read full article

Joseph Smith, the appointed monitor for the state attorneys general settlement, should start coordinating with the OCC and Fed on their foreclosure abuse agreements now. ... Read full article

Is the right way to hold banks accountable for servicing errors to require them to disgorge funds to borrowers who themselves may have been equally complicit in the process of helping to create mortgage fraud? ... Read full article

Banks' current compliance monitoring and reviews programs do not include the means to identify, measure and remediate potential consumer harm - an expectation coming out of the mortgage consent orders. ... Read full article

The future of institutionalized, imprudent mortgage lending to people who could not otherwise afford the loans was foretold in 1999. ... Read full article

Are appraisals accurate enough to impose death sentences on banks when there is such confusion in value terminology, assumptions and interagency appraisal guidance? Recent evidence from the commercial mortgage-backed security market suggests not. ... Read full article

It's become a tool for enforcing the Fair Housing and Equal Credit Opportunity Acts, but regulators haven't provided a framework for banks to carry out the actual intent of the CRA - prudently serving community credit needs. ... Read full article

The foreclosure reviews mandated by the Fed and the OCC have a better chance of helping current and future borrowers than the state attorneys general settlement, if it ever happens. ... Read full article

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau can already pay boundless sums to political allies, the self-described consumerist organizations. ... Read full article

Fearless forecasts for bank regulation and reform in the new year. ... Read full article

What the former Fed chairman does not tell us, because he cannot, is the name of a single bank that went under and required taxpayer support because of proprietary trading gone bad. ... Read full article

Perversely, the proposed compliance framework presumes that a banking entity has violated the Volcker Rule unless the entity can prove otherwise. ... Read full article

Supervisors must reach out to bankers and encourage appeals where the bank and the agency's front line are at an impasse, and hammer out procedures that give bankers no reason to fear retribution. ... Read full article

The Obama administration's reasons for charging banks $61 billion are disingenuous and transparently political. The tax has nothing to do with recouping Tarp costs or making the system safer. ... Read full article

This hangover has thus far been nursed with more of the same cheap money and lavish subsidies on which the housing market previously binged. ... Read full article

The very first section of the very first topic in the CFPB's Supervision and Examination Manual goes right to the heart of the matter: the compliance obligations and potential liabilities of the board of directors. ... Read full article