Wednesday's filing deadline at the FEC brought with it a new trove of campaign finance data. See some of the juiciest nuggets in our monthly filing round-up.
Continue readingSuper PAC profile: State bankers target lawmakers over Dodd Frank law
A group of state-based banking associations have launched a new Super PAC--known as "Friends of Traditional Banking"--to target lawmakers who they consider hostile or friendly to their concerns: namely, the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law.
"Everyone knows that traditional banks didn't cause the economic crisis, but that didn't stop Congress from heaping massive new regulations on them and their customers," reads the group's website. "The Dodd-Frank regulatory reform act...was supposed to target Wall Street abuses. It didn't. Instead it aimed squarely at traditional banks and their customers. When it all shakes out, it will reduce ...
Continue readingBig financial interests chip away at Dodd Frank regulations
Today the House plans to take up two industry-backed bills dealing with derivatives, the hitherto opaque financial instruments so crucial to the 2008 meltdown, under a procedure usually reserved for noncontroversial matters.
A coalition of labor and consumer groups, Americans for Financial Reform (AFR), believes the bills, which have bipartisan support, should be controversial and is urging lawmakers to oppose them. "Both proposed bills are unnecessary and potentially harmful attempts to micromanage the work of regulators in implementing the Dodd-Frank Act," the groups argued. "They amplify the views of the regulated industries which already have overwhelmingly greater resources to intervene ...
Continue readingBig lobbyists battle for big and small clients over Dodd Frank fee cap
As the House Committee on Financial Services readies for next week's hearings to discuss new regulations for the banking industry, lobbyists lined up to battle over the changes, extending a battle between small banks, big banks and big retailers.
In a letter submitted to Congress on Tuesday, Feb. 8, the American Bankers Association said the potential changes, "will cause severe harm to the entire banking industry and, in particular, to community-based banks and the communities they serve."
The ABA's dire warning is a response to proposed regulations by the Federal Reserve on debit card and credit card fees ...
Continue readingSmall banks continue lobbying winning streak at FDIC
When the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation proposed new rules in early November that would hit big banks harder than small ones when assessing fees for the exhausted deposit insurance fund, community bankers--who had aggressively lobbied first Congress and then in recent months the independent agency--declared victory.
"The FDIC today took an important step in leveling the playing field for the nation's community banks," said Jim McPhee, chairman of the Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) in a statement at the time. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) meeting logs show that Independent Community Bankers of America representatives met four times with agency officials since August, when the agency first put meeting records on-line in a bid to increase transparency.
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