FINREG was signed into law by the President this week.                 
 
I’m sorry to say that FINREG recommends changes to 12b-1 fees that amount to nothing and offer no further protection of investors from this rip-off fee. 12b-1 fees are an ongoing charge by mutual funds to individual investors and are effectively an annuity payment to stock [...]

This sounds like the name of a low-budget Hollywood blood & guts / smash-up movie.  Would that it were true. Repo 105 is a reference to an arcane accounting rule that permits banks to misrepresent the state of their health (balance sheet). This subject is beginning to catch some press because we recently learned that [...]

The Congressional Oversight Panel for the TARP program released information on its findings on the health of small banks. Almost 3000 small banks (there are about 8100 banks in the USA) will have to dramatically reduce the business they do with commercial real estate and build up their balance sheet. Small banks are facing a [...]