Regulation | featured news

...The boom in resource markets that started 10 years ago attracted many big banks to trade oil, metals and agriculture, but the 2008 financial crisis forced a painful retreat and tighter regulation now means some banks may throw in the towel.

The 2008 financial crisis roiled the banking system and swamped the global economy, leaving millions of Americans jobless, underemployed or facing foreclosure. In its wake, Congress set out to overhaul how the government oversees Wall Street. The result was a sprawling law, the Dodd-Frank Act, which aims to prevent future crises by giving the government new tools and restricting banks' activities. The law may make future crises less likely, but it increases costs for companies, especially banks, and their customers.

The New York Stock Exchange said it will pay $5 million to resolve U.S. regulatory charges that it gave certain customers “an improper head start” on trading information.

The parasailing industry in Florida, and almost everywhere else in the country, is not regulated, leaving most owners to operate at their own discretion.

Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday that a Republican-led effort to loosen new regulations on Wall Street would put voters "back in chains."

U.N. member states have failed to reach agreement on a new treaty to regulate the multibillion dollar global arms trade.

Delegates from around the world gather in New York on Monday for the start of month-long U.N.-hosted negotiations to hammer out the first-ever binding treaty to regulate the global weapons market, valued at more than $60 billion a year.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday sought to bring debt collectors and credit bureaus under its purview, marking the first time the often controversial industries would be subject to federal supervision... Cordray said a reason why they are targeting these firms is because they have expanded their reach into consumers’ lives during the recession. More people are now being pursued by debt collectors and have watched their credit scores slip.

Democratic Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts does not intend to seek re-election in 2012, his office said Monday, closing out a career of more than three decades in Congress capped by last year's passage of legislation imposing new regulations on Wall Street.

The European Union set out proposals for strict new regulations on credit-rating firms in a move it said was aimed in part at diversifying the industry.