SIFMA’s executive vice president of public policy and advocacy, Kenneth E. Bentsen, Jr., testified before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit. The purpose of his testimony was to discuss the Qualified Mortgage (“QM”) proposed rulemaking. View testimony in full here(links externally to SIFMA website).

The Federal Reserve is issuing this guidance to emphasize the importance of appropriate risk management practices and controls in connection with a decision not to complete foreclosure proceedings after they have been initiated (a situation referred to in this guidance as an abandoned foreclosure). This guidance applies to state member banks, bank holding companies and savings and loan holding companies (collectively, banking organizations) with residential mortgage servicing operations. View letter in full here (links externally to FRB website).

The CFTC is proposing to grant, pursuant to section 4(c) of the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA), temporary exemptive relief in order to allow non-U.S. swap dealers and non-U.S. major swap participants to delay compliance with certain entity-level requirements of the CEA (and CFTC regulations promulgated thereunder), subject to specified conditions. Comments Due: August 13, 2012 View exemptive order in full here (links externally to GPO website).

Chairman Mary Schapiro began the SEC's Open Meeting by emphasizing the benefits of implementing a consolidated audit trail, including: Increasing the data available to regulators investigating illegal activities, such as insider trading, wash sales and market manipulation; Improving the ability of regulators to reconstruct broad-based market events in an accurate and timely manner; Increasing the ability of regulators to monitor overall market structure, so that both the Commission and the SRO's can be better informed about how rules are affecting markets; Reducing the data production burdens

In this statement, SEC commissioner Elisse Walter addresses the adoption of the Final rules for a Consolidated Audit Trail. Commissioner Walters talks about the increasing need for regulation in the U.S. capital markets, and how a Consolidated Audit Trail system would allow for cross market tracking that would give the SEC the information needed for determining market manipulation. Walters goes on and lists the many other benefits that could result from such a system, but then expresses her disappointment and dissent towards the adopted rule. In her opinion, the rule fails to provide proper