Despite opposition from the financial industry, the newly minted Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) today launched a public database of consumer complaints about credit cards--including the name of the company issuing the card--received since June 1. The beta version of the database is available for viewing and downloading on the agency's website. The Bureau plans to add to and tweak it in the months ahead with complaints about other financial products, such as mortgages, student and other types of loans, and banking charges and fees.
"No longer will consumer complaints only be known to the individual complainant, bank, regulator ...
Continue readingMore JPMorgan meetings with Treasury on Volcker rule
JPMorgan executives, including CEO Jamie Dimon, attended several meetings at the Treasury Department last month to discuss the controversial Volcker rule and other matters related to the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, according to new meeting logs released by the agency Thursday.
In the weeks leading up to the bank's disclosure that it had lost at least $2 billion in the sort of hedging strategy that could come under question as agencies implement the Volcker ban on proprietary trading, JPMorgan executives attended three meetings at the agency, the logs show.
Two of those meetings, both on April 26 with Deputy ...
Continue readingJPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon met with Treasury Secretary on Volcker in March
Newly published meeting logs from the Treasury Department show that Jamie Dimon, CEO of embattled JPMorgan & Chase, had a private audience with Secretary Timothy Geithner to discuss the Volcker rule and other issues on March 6.
The logs also show that JPMorgan executives attended two other meetings that same month. Volcker was also on the table at another Treasury session the same day, this one a larger meeting with Deputy Assistant Secretary Lance Auer that also included representatives with other groups such as Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs.
The day before, JPMorgan representatives were also present at another group meeting ...
Continue readingTrying to track JPMorgan? Treasury Dodd-Frank meeting logs not up to date
Updated 4:22 p.m. The Treasury Department has now fixed the link to March meetings with outside groups concerning implementation of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. A spokesman also just called to thank us for alerting the agency to the missed deadline.
Something curious happened after we contacted the Treasury Department press office Tuesday to inquire why it had missed the April deadline for releasing information about meetings with outside groups around implementation of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law--meetings that often include financial heavyweights such as JPMorgan Chase & Company.
We did not get a response -- neither to our initial ...
Continue readingFINRA: Open data not on the table
A quasi-governmental agency that polices the investment industry has come up with a plan to make it simpler for consumers to avoid shady money managers -- but it includes no provisions to make the underlying data available to the public.
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), a Self-Regulatory Organization (SRO) that polices the investment industry, was charged to come up with a proposal to make it simpler for consumers to find out whether the broker-dealers and investment advisers they consult have a history of disciplinary problems. This could be anything from multimillion dollar fines levied by authorities to felony counts to ...
Continue readingBig banks press financial agencies on Volcker rule
Big banks paid calls on federal financial agencies in the days leading up to Monday's midnight deadline for the public to submit comments on the controversial Volcker rule, a provision of the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory legislation meant to prohibit banks from using customers' money to make risky bets on the market.
Bank of America and Morgan Stanley paid visits to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in recent weeks, according to reports of meetings with outside groups that federal financial agencies make available voluntarily.
Last month representatives from the law firm Davis Polk -- which was hired by the Securities ...
Continue readingRevolving door from CFTC to lobbying firm
A former Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) commissioner has gone through the revolving door to the law and lobbying firm firm Patton Boggs, where he'll work as a senior policy advisor, the firm announced Tuesday.
"Regulatory agencies should be accessible to the businesses and industries they regulate," said Michael Dunn, the former commissioner, in a statement today. "I am excited to join the firm, and I look forward to helping clients navigate complex regulatory processes and agencies."
Appointed to the CFTC by former President George W. Bush, Dunn specialized in agricultural issues at the agency. His new employer is ...
Continue readingDespite Fed’s steps toward transparency, much remains opaque
In a bid to increase transparency, the Federal Reserve will for the first time make public the forecasts for benchmark interest rates that will inform discussions at tomorrow's meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which sets monetary policy for the nation. But despite this action, there is still plenty of opacity in how the Fed conducts business.
For starters, the Fed delays release of the actual transcripts of these meetings for five years. While the FOMC releases minutes of these meetings three weeks after the fact, the most recent full transcript currently available is for December 12 ...
Continue readingRegulators lobbied by industry testify on Volcker rule
Federal regulators have had at least 89 meetings with outside groups, most of them big banking interests, about the controversial "Volcker rule," the provision in the Dodd-Frank financial law that prohibits banks from making bets with their own money. The effort to curb the practice, widely held to be a contributor to the 2008 financial meltdown, was the subject of a hearing in Congress today.
Representatives of the same agencies that met with these outside interests testified that the Volcker rule would be difficult to implement. "One of the more difficult tasks in implementing the statutory prohibitions is distinguishing between ...
Continue readingData lacking on private student loans
With student debt rising to a projected $1 trillion and concerns rising in the Occupy Wall Street movement and beyond about the bursting of the student loan bubble, the new federal consumer protection agency has set a Tuesday deadline for the public to send in data and stories about the rapidly expanding private student loan market—loans students are getting from banks and, increasingly, by for-profit universities such as Corinthian Colleges and DeVry University.
“The private student loan market is one of the least understood credit markets,” wrote Rick Hackett, a staffer for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in ...
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