Banking/Financial Institutions

In an opinion piece, the former congressman said financial reforms will be completed, "but later than they should be."

Lending to small businesses is on a long stretch of increases, bolstered by a government program designed to help firms hire and expand as the economy recovers. 

Since the trough of the recession, small-business lending has increased by about $8.9 billion through loans to community banks and loan funds from the Small Business Lending Fund (SBLF), according to a report released by the Treasury Department on Wednesday. 

"In every region of the country, the Obama Administration’s Small Business Lending Fund is supporting small and family-owned businesses with the funds they need to create jobs and grow,” said Neal Wolin, deputy secretary of the Treasury. 

The Treasury Department is lifting sanctions against a popular Colombian soccer team, saying the club no longer has ties to leaders of the Cali drug cartel.

With Wednesday’s announcement, any assets that America de Cali has in the United States will be unfrozen, and the soccer club can once again have financial relationships with American citizens.

Treasury had placed those sanctions against America de Cali almost 14 years ago, when Miguel and Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, leaders of the Cali cartel, controlled the team.

David Cohen, Treasury under secretary dealing with terrorism, said Wednesday’s move illustrated how hard both the Colombian government and America de Cali had worked to remove the cartel’s influence on the team.

“As we continue our work with the Colombian government to combat the threat of narcotics trafficking, we will use our authorities to target those responsible for illicit behavior just as we will lift sanctions in cases where there has been a concrete change in behavior,” Cohen said in a statement.

Former Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) donated his personal papers to the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

Mary Schapiro, the former head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), is joining a private consulting firm as managing director.

The longtime public servant is now stepping into the private sector, joining the Promontory Financial Group LLC in its Washington office, according to The Wall Street Journal.

While the firm is known for hiring a host of former regulators — more than one-quarter of its full-time employees spent time at regulatory agencies — Schapiro shot down any notion that she was engaging in the widely criticized "revolving door" of government workers joining private firms and vice versa.

"In my case, there's no revolving door…I won't ever be going back to government," she told the Journal.

Liberal groups are putting pressure on the Obama administration to crack down on "too big to jail" banks.

A coalition of left-leaning groups, including MoveOn.org, is sending more than 300,000 petition signatures to the Justice Department, calling on the executive branch either to break up the nation's biggest banks and prosecute wrongdoers in them or have Attorney General Eric Holder resign.

"Activists across the country are demanding accountability from the nation’s largest financial institutions that were bailed out using trillions of taxpayer dollars,” Brian Kettenring, coordinator of the Campaign for a Fair Settlement, said. “They’re calling on President Obama to demand justice for the millions of homeowners harmed by the big banks’ criminal activities, and on Attorney General Holder to either do his job or step down.” 

The prepaid card industry is scrambling to respond to informal guidance from the Federal Reserve that could cause them to repackage their products.

Banks are urging regulators to give them more flexibility in dealing with struggling student loan borrowers, especially when they are first out of school and hunting for work.

If banks could be given more regulatory flexibility to work with struggling borrowers of private student loans who just recently graduated, they believe they could reduce defaults. They pushed regulators in a letter Wednesday to give them that leeway.

"We propose that banks should be granted greater flexibility to work with borrowers experiencing financial difficulty who are recent graduates, or early in their careers, when it is more difficult to enter the labor force and establish financial independence and stability," wrote Richard Hunt, president and CEO of the Consumer Bankers Association.

"Our members believe they can responsibly use more options than are now permitted under current regulatory guidelines," he added.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Wednesday that he would introduce a bill to break up banks that are “too big to jail.”

Sanders’s announcement comes after the Department of Justice said some banks have grown so big that it has not pursued prosecutions for fear an indictment would “have a negative impact on the national economy.”

“In other words, we have a situation now where Wall Street banks are not only too big to fail, they are too big to jail,” Sanders said. “That is unacceptable and that has got to change because America is based on a system of law and justice.”

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) launched on Thursday a public database of more than 90,000 consumer complaints, but drew bank complaints in the process.

The database, the largest ever of its kind made public, details grievances consumers have aired about credit cards, mortgages, bank accounts and other financial services. The watchdog hopes releasing the information will help paint a picture of problems in the consumer financial marketplace, while opening up the information to others who could use it.

But the data release has banks crying foul, arguing that the complaints were made public before the bureau has determined if they are valid.

Richard Hunt, president and CEO of the Consumer Bankers Association, called the database a "serious step in the wrong direction." He contended that because the validity of the complaints are not verified before publication, the database could do more harm than good for consumers by exposing them to unreliable information.

"This approach is unnecessary, misleading and ultimately harmful to consumers," he said. "A better service to consumers would have allowed for collaboration between the CFPB and financial institutions to determine if a complaint is indeed valid, prior to publication."