Stress tests

In the most sweeping capital distribution order since the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve says it will prohibit big banks from buying back their stock in the third quarter and limit dividend payments to second-quarter levels.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has proposed a plan that would exempt the Federal Home Loan Banks from conducting stress tests.

Tighter mortgage regulations are making Canada's housing market less risky, according to the government agency responsible for its oversight.

Ginnie Mae's stress testing model was based on large issuers, and does not appear to adequately reflect important qualitative differences between larger and smaller issuers.

The regulators have yet to complete rules on regional bank supervision, community bank capital and other provisions meant to ease institutions' burden.

The combined bank will move into a more demanding supervisory class under the Fed’s regime, but analysts also see a regulatory upside from the deal.

A top official at the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions defended tougher underwriting rules blamed recently for a slump in the nation’s housing market, but left open the possibility that regulations could ease if conditions change.

The mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would have to draw as much as $78 billion in the event of a serious economic crisis, according to stress test results released Tuesday by the housing regulator.

The federal bank regulators are considering roughly a dozen new rulemakings in response to the bill rolling back certain sections of Dodd-Frank.

The biggest legacy of the current regulatory relief effort may be the increasing focus on whether organizing banks in supervisory buckets by asset size makes sense. Yet the bill deals with just one of the two big asset thresholds in the law.