The Federal Financial Forum

From: City A.M.

Philip Booth

The City is split when it comes to Brexit. Certainly, the larger City institutions with significant EU business tend to side with Remain. However, smaller companies and those with a more global business model are more divided.

The supporters of the EU value the Single Market. They seem to believe that it promotes free trade and reduces regulation: in reality it does neither. The main benefit of the Single Market is that it reduces the costs for large companies of dealing with up to 28 regulatory systems. Meanwhile, smaller companies that do not trade with the EU suffer from the full force of EU regulation.

Editor’s Note: For information about the controversy over CMS’ Star Ratings, please see CRE: CMS’ Five-Star Quality Rating System is a Violation of Medicare and APA Rulemaking Requirements and CMS Responds to CRE.

From: Politico

More than half of Congress is asking CMS to delay the looming release of the agency’s star ratings, which are designed to identify hospitals that have high patient quality and experience.

On Monday, 225 House representatives co-signed a letter to CMS Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt, asking him to hold off on issuing the ratings this month; last week, 60 senators signed onto a similar letter.

From: HousingWire

D.C. Circuit ‘hostile’ towards the CFPB

Brena Swanson

The opening rounds started in the legal battle between PHH and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit heard oral arguments on Tuesday.

According to an article in The Wall Street Journal by Yuka Hayashi:

A federal appeals court panel wrestled Tuesday with the question of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s authority, with one judge persistently asking about the constitutionality of the watchdog agency’s structure, saying it concentrates “huge power” in its top official.

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From: Morning Consult

Ryan Rainey

The Obama administration on Wednesday indicated it will continue to take legal action to defend the Financial Stability Oversight Council’s designations of non-bank systemically important financial institutions, following a federal court ruling Wednesday in favor of stripping MetLife Inc. of its SIFI label.

“We strongly disagree with the court’s decision,” a Treasury spokesperson said in a statement. “We are confident that FSOC’s determination was lawful and will continue to defend the Council’s designations process vigorously.”

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From: BNA/Bloomberg Law

By Richard A. Blunk and Eric W. Armstrong

Richard Blunk is Managing Director and General Counsel of Thermopylae Ventures, LLC, a Dallas-based alternative investment group with interests in cybersecurity, intellectual property monetization, alternative litigation finance, fire retardants, Internet addresses, inbound foreign investment, vocational rehabilitation equipment, sports medicine and Texas real estate.

Eric Armstrong is Controller and Compliance Manager of Virdatint, Inc., a Dallas-based software company that provides a comprehensive distributed data virtualization, federation, integration, master data management, analytics and security platform where the data remains in its original source and format.