There were $444.9 billion of retail and food services sales in May (after adjustment for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences but not for price changes), according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This level represented an increase of 1.2 percent from the previous month, and 2.7 percent from May of last year.
The full House yesterday passed a spending bill that includes a provision granting an exemption from derivatives clearing requirements for small bank holding companies.
Following advocacy by ABA, state associations, bankers and other financial trade groups, a controversial revenue-raising provision in trade preferences bill H.R. 1295 was removed.
By a 231-195 vote, the House yesterday passed an amendment to a government spending bill that would prevent the use of disparate impact analysis by the Department of Housing and Urban Development under the Fair Housing Act.
Six financial regulators today issued a set of final guidelines for the firms they oversee to assess their diversity policies and practices.
The OCC looks to boards of directors in addition to senior management to set a tone at a bank that “encourages ethical and responsible behavior and demands individual accountability,” Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry said at an industry event in New York today.
Despite regulators’ action — and ABA’s lawsuit — after the Volcker Rule to protect existing bank investments in trust preferred securities, community bankers are facing the same issue as the Basel III capital standards come into effect, ABA VP Hugh Carney wrote in an American Banker op-ed today.
The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision yesterday proposed an interest rate risk capital requirement, which ABA deemed “out of line with the regulatory program in the U.S.”
Eighty percent of bankers expect that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s mortgage rules will continue to constrict mortgage credit, according to the results of ABA’s latest Real Estate Lending Survey released today.
The share of the labor force working part-time but that would prefer to work full time has risen, according to a Federal Reserve Board of San Francisco study released yesterday.