The Federal Financial Forum

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)–A U.S. housing regulator should do a better job overseeing 12 regional institutions that provide funding for home loans amid financial problems at four of the those banks, a government watchdog report said Wednesday.

The report by the inspector general of the Federal Housing Finance Agency examined the agency’s oversight of the 12 Federal Home Loan Banks, which are chartered by the federal government but owned by their member banks and other lenders. They lend money to more than 7,800 banks, thrifts and credit unions, which then use that money to make their own mortgages.

From: WSJ

‘Volcker Rule’

Boon or Bane? It Depends Which Side of Street You’re On

Depending on whom you ask, the so-called Volcker rule will mean either the end of banking as we know it or toothlessly allow banks to continue to bet the house—with the backing of the U.S. taxpayer. Neither of these extremes are true, of course.

The Volcker rule, part of the landmark 2010 Dodd-Frank financial-overhaul law, will curtail large banks’ proprietary-trading activities. In other words, no more multibillion-dollar bets on whether the housing market will rise or fall or whether the dollar is going to do better (or worse) than the euro or yen.

From: Heritage Foundation

James Gattuso and Diane Katz

Hindsight is supposed to be 20/20, but looking back on the past 12 months, it’s tough to see any sense in many of the Administration’s regulatory missteps. Of course, there are bound to be a few howlers when government churns out more than 3,500 rules in a year, including dozens unleashed by Obamacare, Dodd–Frank, and the perpetually errant Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). But by any standard, 2011 brought forth a remarkable number and variety of regulatory blunders.

From: Financial Times

By Shahien Nasiripour in New York

The US Federal Reserve has proposed new rules requiring the largest financial firms to hold more capital and detailed for the first time since the financial crisis how the central bank will deal with giant banks in distress whose failure could threaten financial stability.

The biggest banks will be required to achieve a 9.5 per cent ratio of core capital to risk-weighted assets by 2019 as part of the so-called Basel III reforms, the Fed announced on Tuesday, in an expected move that mirrors proposals by a group of global banking regulators known as the Basel committee.

OIRA, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, housed in the White House Office of Management and Budget, is the office which “regulates the regulators”,  a function commonly called centralized regulatory review.

Heretofore this office has been relatively unknown outside of Washington, DC; even in DC it is a somewhat obscure office.

Mistakenly ORIA is often taken as the  product of the Reagan Administration when in fact it is was created by the Carter Administration.

More importantly OIRA-like organizations have existed since the time of the Lyndon Johnson Administration.