The American Bankers Association, a trade group for thousands of banks headed by former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating, voted to start a legal entity for this federal campaign cycle, adding millions of dollars into an already overstuffed election. The ABA entity would reportedly donate to existing Super PACs, so that the member banks can keep [...]

I liked that NBC Nightly News used Yves Smith to describe the foreclosure fraud settlement last night. And she’s right that the ultimate penalty here is tiny for the banks compared to the damage done. Moreover, as Felix Salmon explains in a post actually claiming that the settlement is a win-win for everyone (I’ll circle [...]

It does appear that Elizabeth Warren has the inside track to getting the position as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. We know that bureau, as part of the Dodd-Frank bill, lives inside the Federal Reserve, albeit with an independent budget and a (mostly) independent rulemaking authority. However, at the outset, the bureau comes [...]

The American Bankers Association, the largest trade organization of financial firms, formally opposed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill today, not on the grounds that it constrains Wall Street profits or places too many restrictions on their core business. They make some nods to new regulations that will, in their eyes, “limit the ability of [...]