house financial services committee

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner got an earful last week from House Democrats wary of the White House proposal to pay for government rescues of Wall Street firms by taxing healthy competitors only after Washington steps in. The critics want companies to pre-pay instead into a kind of sitting insurance fund to be used for the [...]

Testifying before House lawmakers yesterday, Sheila Bair, head of  the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, endorsed much of the controversial proposal to grant the White House new powers to take over Wall Street investment firms when their failure threatens the larger financial system.
A timely, orderly resolution process that could be applied to both banks and non-bank [...]

“Mr. Secretary, I’m not a man that fears this administration or you,” Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.) told Geithner. “But I do fear the accumulation of power exercised by someone in the future that can be extraordinary.”

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who’s testifying this morning before the House Financial Services Committee on legislation empowering the White House to take over Wall Street firms when their failure threatens the finance system on the whole, just made a curious claim. Asked by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) whether the legislation grants the White House the [...]

Different bill; same concerns.
House Democrats introduced legislation Tuesday granting the White House broad new authority to bail out investment houses and other non-banks when their potential collapse is a threat to the larger financial system. But while the bill goes far beyond a similar White House proposal in terms of protecting taxpayers, Rep. Brad Sherman [...]

Democrats on Capitol Hill were all cheers when they passed first-of-its-kind credit card reform earlier in the year — only to become publicly indignant when the card companies began hiking rates and fees in advance of those changes taking hold.
So after some Democrats initially delayed the implementation date until next year — a naked bow [...]

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 [...]

In April, we ran a piece about how some Democrats had bowed to the wishes of the banking industry and delayed their credit card reforms until next year, even as consumers have struggled to keep up amid the recession. Inevitably, the banks have used the delay by busily installing rate and fee hikes to beat [...]

The 10 members of the panel named by Congress to investigate the causes of last year’s economic implosion appear to be wrestling with their role in this year’s push for financial industry regulatory reform, judging from their statements at today’s first hearing.
Brooksley Born, who fought unsuccessfully to regulate derivatives during her years at the helm [...]

Here’s a fascinating exchange between Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Financial Services subpanel on housing, and Mary Coffin, executive vice president of Wells Fargo’s mortgage servicing division, during yesterday’s hearing to examine how effectively the administration’s voluntary mortgage modification program is preventing foreclosures. (Not very, it turns out.) The [...]