The Federal Financial Forum

From: CreditNewsOnline.com

The Laredo, Texas-based International Bancshares Corp. announced on Friday that it will shutter 55 grocery store branches and lay off approximately 500 people in response to the Durbin Amendment, which will cap what banks can charge merchants for debit card transactions.

“Government many times passes regulations that end up hurting the very people they were intended to help,” International Bancshares Corp. chairman and CEO Dennis Nixon said. “This appears to be one of those cases.

By Dave Clarke and Jonathan Spicer

(Reuters) – Regulators hashing out the details of a new ban on proprietary trading are wrestling with internal disagreements over how much leeway to give banks when it comes to their ability to hedge risk, according to people familiar with the negotiations.

The ban is known as the Volcker rule, named after former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. It will prohibit banks from trading for their own profit in securities, derivatives and certain other financial instruments, and ban their investing in or sponsoring hedge funds or private equity funds.

Editor’s Note:  The statement below correctly emphasizes the importance of the SEC “allocating sufficient staffing resources to pursue reasonable cost-benefit analysis.”  A distinguished commentor on regulatory review recently discussed the process, extending over five administrations and involving the development of a cadre of trained analyists, necessary to bring centralized regulatory review to fruition.

From: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research

The decision of the President to delay the EPA ozone standard is based upon the concept of centralized regulatory review. Centralized regulatory review, Presidential oversight of federal regulatory agencies, is often considered a defining component of the regulatory state although the Executive, Congressional and Judicial Branches of government continue to spar over control of the regulators.

There are two alternative views of the origins of centralized review.

One view of the origin of centralized regulatory review is set forth in probably the most quoted paper on the subject written by then Professor, now Justice, Elena Kagan in Presidential Administration in which she concludes: “The sea change began with Ronald Reagan’s inauguration”.

Rules Needed to Define Unfair Practices

Google, Facebook and Twitter have much in common.  All three web-based service firms have pioneered or reinvented their primary area of expertise.  All three companies are American businesses that have changed how the world uses the internet.  All three companies act as platforms bringing together different sets of users. Of particular note, all three companies provide their primary services to consumers for free.

Also of note, all three firms are reported to be either under FTC investigation (Google and Twitter) or the subject of a petition to the FTC to be investigated (Facebook).