The goal of the Volcker Rule, which became law under the Dodd-Frank Act was to restrict speculative trading activity in risky derivatives by the Too Big To Fail Banks.  The ban on proprietary bank trading was proposed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker who believed that one of the primary causes of the 2008 financial meltdown was a result of speculative trading activity [...]

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas joined the growing chorus of critics who maintain that the Dodd-Frank Act will not prevent future taxpayer funded bank bailouts.  The Dallas Fed said taxpayers are still at risk for the cost of large banks failures and that any future bailouts should result in severe consequences for both bank management and bank creditors.  According to Bloomberg, The [...]

The State of Maryland, which has not had a banking failure since November 2010, saw two banks collapse today as regulators closed the HarVest Bank of Maryland and the Bank of the Eastern Shore.  Since the start of the banking crisis in 2008, Maryland has had a total of only 8 banking failures compared to a nationwide total of 435 bank failures. After state regulators closed the [...]

Maryland state regulators closed the Bank of the Eastern Shore, Cambridge, MD and the FDIC was appointed as receiver.  As has happened on previous occasions, the FDIC was unable to find a buyer for the failed bank, leaving uninsured depositors at risk of loss on their savings. To protect insured depositors and wind down the operations of failed Bank of the Eastern Shore, the FDIC [...]

The FDIC announced in a press release today that a total of 72 enforcement actions were taken against banks and individuals for March 2012.  During the previous month, the FDIC had issued a total of 53 enforcement actions. Included in the FDIC enforcement actions were 18 civil money penalties, 1 prompt corrective action notice, 13 consent orders, 3 orders terminating deposit insurance, [...]

The government agency established to be the watchdog over the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) has been keeping busy.  The financial crisis of 2008 resulted in the disbursement of over $400 billion of TARP funds which requires government oversight. In order to prevent waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer funded TARP disbursements, Congress created the Office of the Special Inspector [...]

Four years after the start of the banking crisis, federal investigators are proving what many Americans have long suspected – the root cause of many banking failures was due to fraud. The Office of the Special Inspector General for The Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) announced last week that a massive $41 million bank fraud contributed to the 2011 collapse of Bank [...]

Has the exponential increase in lending regulations since 2008 contributed to the worst economic decline since the Depression of the 1930′s?  Government “solutions” to problems have a long history of failure.  In addition, the unanticipated consequences of government “solutions” often result in a plethora of new problems worse than the original ones [...]

Every banker knows that public confidence in the banking industry is essential. With the banking industry approaching a near meltdown last year, the Federal Reserve decided to conduct a series of “stress tests” on the country’s largest banks in order to restore confidence in the banking system.  After reviewing the results of the stress tests, many critics now [...]

Stress tests of the largest banks in the country against a financial hurricane of “extremely adverse” economic conditions shows that almost all of the largest banks in the country would be able to maintain adequate capital levels.  The Federal Reserve said that 18 of the 19 banks stress tested would survive even if stock prices collapsed 50%, the unemployment rate soared [...]