News Topic: Too Big to Fail (TBTF)

In an earlier post I described the FDIC’s proposed SPOE approach to resolution of SIFI banks and other financial institutions under Title II of Dodd-Frank. That post discussed two of the three components of SPOE: control of the process by the regulator ... Read full article

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MBS investors suffered a serious legal blow a couple of months back when the Second Circuit held that the Trust Indenture Act of 1939 doesn't apply to MBS .  ... Read full article

The data breach stories just don't seem to stop. (And why would they?). The latest (I think) is about a massive and sophisticated multi-million dollar hacking of several banks .  If you read down through the story, one of the things the hackers did ... Read full article

Community banks are ailing.  Over the past decade many of them have failed or been gobbled up by larger banks. What's going on?  ... Read full article

Last month mortgage servicer Ocwen (that's NewCo backwards) was mauled by the NY State Department of Financial Services. Now the California Department of Corporations is seeking to revoke Ocwen's license to do business in that state.  ... Read full article

Just in time for the new year, I've got a new article called Safe Banking up on SSRN. The article is a first principles reexamination of the industrial organization of financial services. It identifies the institutional combination of deposits and ... Read full article

Will we have an appropriations bill before a government shutdown? The fight over the 2015 Appropriations Bill is now focused on one of the non-appropriations measures stuck onto the bill by the House GOP. That provision would repeal section 716 of the ... Read full article

Along with some thoughts about FSOC's designation of SIFIs in general, over at Dealb%k . ... Read full article

There are three major new regulations shaping the housing finance market:  QM (qualified mortgage), QRM (qualified residential mortgage) and Reg X.  QM is a safe harbor from the statutory ability-to-repay requirement that applies to all mortgages.  QRM is ... Read full article

Yves Smith has had some great coverage of the AIG bailout trail over on Naked Capitalism.  While the litigation, as Yves has characterized it, is a bit like a brawl between the ugly stepsisters, it's telling us all kinds of stuff we didn't know ... Read full article

When I first heard about the NY Fed's Doomsday book, my initial thought was, "Wow, they've got a comprehensive survey of land titles, so MERS really isn't an issue!" Then I realized it was a Doomsday book, not a Domesday book . ... Read full article

The revelation that 76 million JPMorgan Chase consumer accounts were compromised by hacking should be scaring the heck out of us. The Chase hacking is a r ed flag that hacking poses a real systemic risk to our banking system, and a national security risk ... Read full article

Last December the FDIC put out for comment a proposal for a Single-Point-of-Entry (SPOE) Strategy to implement its Orderly Liquidation Authority (OLA) under Title II of Dodd-Frank. Single-Point-of-Entry has gotten a lot of policy traction. The Treasury ... Read full article

Financial crisis litigation has been going on for several years now and has been resulting in lots of piecemeal settlements. As a result, it's easy to miss the big picture.  There's actually been quite a lot of settlements covering a fair amount ... Read full article

So we are again treated to what has become an annual tradition:  the analysis of Dodd-Frank on its anniversary.  The Republicans trot out a report critical of the Act, and the Democrats defend it.  Yawn. ... Read full article

I note two of the more brazen attempts to undermine Dodd-Frank's FSOC, over at Dealb%k . ... Read full article

Larry Summers has a v ery interesting book review of Atif Mian and Amir Sufi's book House of Debt  in the Financial Times. What's particularly interesting about the book review is not so much what Summers has to say about Mian and Sufi, as his ... Read full article