The incoming Financial Stability Oversight Council will face an extraordinary challenge:  a large and growing shortage of market liquidity that has necessitated unprecedented government intervention in fixed-income capital markets, and threatens to undermine the future vitality of those markets.   U.S. regulators confronted a similar problem in the wake of the 2008-09 Global Financial Crisis, with surprising …

The federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), originally authorized by the CARES Act to support small businesses and their employees through the economic disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic, was reopened in January 2021 under the new Administration. The renewed PPP included added flexibilities, such as allowing certain prior borrowers to apply for a second loan.  On Feb. …

Stories Driving the Week Op-Ed: Streamline Bank Rules for Spotting Sanctions Violators “Check the box” compliance practices are hampering bank efforts to enforce economic sanctions, BPI President and CEO Greg Baer wrote on Feb. 26 in an American Banker op-ed. Incoming Treasury Department officials need to reassume control over the sanctions regime and implement a …

In June 2020, the Federal Reserve Board took the extraordinary action of limiting dividend payments and banning share repurchases of all banks that are subject to annual stress tests regardless of their performance on the tests.  It extended restrictions in September and eased but still maintained restrictions in December.  In the wake of the Global …

Dear Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Schumer, Minority Leader McCarthy and Minority Leader McConnell:  The undersigned consumer and banking industry organizations write to express our strong support to insert language into the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 to protect the next round of economic impact payments in that bill from assignment and garnishment. The attached language …