The CFPB issued proposed clarifications to the 2013 Escrows Final Rule, as well as a more recent proposal to address questions regarding qualified mortgages and servicing. The recent proposal addresses five topics: Debt-to-income ratio; Contract variances and the temporary QM provision; Purchase, guarantee or insurability status and the temporary QM; No field preemption under Regulation X; and Small servicer exemption. Click here to view the proposed rule (links externally to CFPB website).

The Board of the International Organization of Securities Commissions ("IOSCO") published a final report on Technological Challenges to Effective Market Surveillance: Issues and Regulatory Tools, which makes recommendations to help market authorities address the technological challenges facing effective market surveillance. This final report provides an overview of current market surveillance regimes and identifies the main challenges that technological developments pose to these regimes. It also makes final recommendations to help market authorities develop the regulatory tools for addressing

SEC Commissioner Luis A. Aguilar gave a speech on the important role of institutional investors in two respects: (i) as monitors of public disclosures made by emerging growth companies that are exempted from some of the otherwise applicable disclosure requirements by the JOBS Act and (ii) as private overseers of executive compensation and other issues in good corporate governance. In both these regards, he suggested that there is, or should be, an implicit partnership between institutional investors and the SEC as the public overseer of corporations. Lofchie Comment: It would be hard to

CFTC Chairman Gensler argued that not enough unsecured lending goes on between banks for "LIBOR" to be a genuine market-determined rate, and said that a substitute must be found. See : Remarks of Chairman Gary Gensler at London City Week on Benchmark Interest Rates. See also : Current Topics: LIBOR and Financial Benchmarks (a compilation of related news stories).

Representatives Maxine Waters and Collin C. Peterson, ranking members of the House Committee on Financial Services and the Committee on Agriculture respectively, have filed a motion for leave to submit a separate amicus brief in support of the CFTC in its appeal of a federal district court's ruling vacating its promulgation of position limit rules for physical commodities, ISDA v. CFTC, 887 F. Supp. 2d 259 (D.D.C. Sep. 28, 2012). The brief accompanying the motion takes issue with that lower court's ruling that the CFTC had no "clear and unambiguous mandate" to set position limits under the