Bailout

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), a vocal critic of exorbitant executive pay, fears new legislation will give competitive advantage to the biggest banks.

Attempting to fix a problem that his panel helped create, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) will introduce legislation today to prevent credit card companies from hiking rates on existing balances. Although Congress passed sweeping credit card reforms earlier in the year — including a ban on retroactive rate hikes — the banking lobby [...]

It’s a big day for banks: The Obama administration is expected to unveil new “too big to fail” proposals for dealing with troubled financial giants, Reuters reports. The proposals would “give the government the power to dismantle large financial companies that get into crises.”
The new draft bill is expected to take a tougher stance toward [...]

On Monday, it was Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) unveiling legislation to rein in overdraft fees. Today it’s Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Barney Frank (D-Mass.) doing the same.
Both bills would require banks to get customer consent before enrolling them in the overdraft protection program; both would cap the number of overdraft fees at six [...]

The Federal Reserve on Thursday proposed a new program of monitoring executive compensation at the nation’s largest financial institutions, a move designed to prevent banks from using pay incentives that encourage risky transactions like those that recently toppled the global economy.

A House Oversight and Government Reform hearing on the controversial merger between Bank of America and Merrill Lynch has been postponed “due to additional documents recently received,” the panel announced today.
The hearing, initially to be held Thursday, has not been rescheduled.

Bush administration officials have been under fire for effectively forcing a merger last December between Bank of America and Merrill Lynch without informing BoA shareholders of the financial dire straights Merrill was in at the time.
But yesterday the Obama administration was pulled more deeply into the scandal as well, after newly unveiled BoA documents suggested [...]

He’s been threatening to do it for weeks, and today Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) made good on his vow to push legislation reining in the overdraft charges that hit consumers who exceed their balances when making debit card purchases. Those fees — which average upwards of $30 a pop — have evolved into an [...]

As we noted on Wednesday, the House Financial Services Committee is in the midst of tackling financial regulatory reform, which has brought out the lobbyists in full force. Here’s just a small taste of the action so far: American Banker is reporting that the committee is close to carving out an exemption for community banks [...]

What seemed like a clear path ahead was upstaged by the health care battle.