Category Archives: Regulations and regulators

Banks Start Volcker Rule Blame Game

Nothing like being able to use something in the headlines to hide your real behavior. And even better if you can get a banking stalwart columnist to run PR for you.

JP Morgan, Not Satisfied with Profitable WaMu Acquisition, Sues FDIC to Extract More

If you are Jamie Dimon, a good deal is apparently never good enough.

401(k) Plan Abuses Finally Coming to Light

I doubt that I’m unusual in being a finance type who has heard about 401 (k) abuses and bad practices for a very long time. So it’s gratifying to see the Financial Times that something is finally being done to try to curb this behavior. But that is hardly the full extent of what is rotten in retirement fund land.

Why Obamacare Cannot “Insure” for Pre-Existing Conditions

Why “insurance” for existing conditions is a bit of a misnomer, and why that matters in terms of health care policy.

Will Opposition in the US and Overseas Derail the Toxic TransPacific Partnership?

Given the extreme measures the Obama Administration has gone to to keep the pending trade deal known as the TransPacific Partnership under wraps, it’s hard to be certain where things stand. But like the Administration’s failed effort to have the US intervene in Syria, this has the potential to be one of those rare cases where the interests of ordinary citizens prevails.

Volcker Rule: The Devil’s in the Unimpressive Enforcement Details

If you managed to be late to the Volcker Rule party, you can learn a great deal of what you’d need to know via the revealing contrast between two reasonably detailed accounts, one at Huffington Post by Shahien Nasiripour, the other by Matt Levine at Bloomberg. If you didn’t know better, you’d wonder if they were talking about the same rule.

Big Banks About to Start Booking Second Mortgage Losses They Can No Longer Extend and Pretend Away

Reuters has a new article, Insight: A new wave of U.S. mortgage trouble threatens, which is simultaneously informative and frustrating. It is informative in that it provides some good detail but it is frustrating in that it depicts a long-standing problem aided and abetted by regulators as new.

Whistleblower Describes How Private Equity Firms Flagrantly Violate SEC Broker-Dealer Requirements

Last week, Crain’s Business Daily and Fortune reported that a whistleblower has provided the SEC with evidence of massive, ongoing violations of securities laws, specifically, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, by several unnamed private equity firms.

Michael Olenick: Consumer Reports Joins Obama in Telling Obamacare Big Lies

After months of analysis I can objectively conclude that Obamacare is, to ordinary middle-class people, worse than worthless.

Obamacare’s Drug Coverage Minefield

Now that the consumer front end of Healthcare.gov seems to be under control (the insurer interface is another matter), public attention is now shifting to the ultimately more important question of what benefits patients receive, and at what cost.

Ian Fraser: The “Financial Terrorism” of Royal Bank of Scotland

Yves here. This story of institutionalized pilferage of customer accounts hasn’t gotten the attention it warrants in the US. Even if you are pretty jaded about bank chicanery, I suspect you’ll find this account falls in the category of “no matter how bad you think it is, it’s worse.” And in this case, the victims aren’t the usual hapless retail customers, but businesses.

Obama Kept His Head in the Sand During Healthcare.gov Fiasco

The New York Times has an instructive account, Inside the Race to Rescue a Health Care Site, and Obama, of the scrambling in the Administration to deal with the beyond-redeption-by-the-power-of-spin disaster of the Healthcare.gov launch.

Governments Will Struggle to Control Bitcoin

Yves here. I was extremely puzzled to see various US regulators make cautiously positive remarks about Bitcoin in Congressional hearings. But I now have a guess as to what happened.

John Coffee on the SEC’s Bogus Enforcement Math

Coffee, a highly respected securities law professor as well as a frequent critic of regulators., he takes a hard look at the SEC’s claims that its performance has improved and finds them wanting.