The Washington Post's Binyamin Appelbaum points out a simple way Barack Obama can do financial reform: appoint stronger regulators. In the next year, Obama can name a new comptroller of the currency, head of the Office of Thrift Supervision, and chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Obama could ...

The Wall Street Journals's Michael R. Crittenden and Marshall Eckblad report: U.S. banks posted last year their sharpest decline in lending since 1942, suggesting that the industry's continued slide is making it harder for the economy to recover. While top-tier banks are recovering at a faster clip, the rest of the industry is still suffering, according to a quarterly report from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Banks fighting for survival, especially those plagued by losses on commercial real estate, are less willing to extend loans, siphoning credit from businesses and consumers.

Another in Understanding Government’s series “Public Service Announcement” profiling the careers and challenges of notable government employees By Norman Kelley At the epicenter of last year’s economic meltdown, along with the disappearance of major financial firms, was the collapse of IndyMac Federal Bank, a California-based institution that found itself overwhelmed with distressed mortgages. A result of the nation’s toxic housing bubble (and an at-sleep-at-the-wheel regulatory infrastructure), IndyMac was emblematic of the country’s national mortgage foreclosure crisis.  FDIC economist Clare Rowley was in the eye of Indy Mac's particular hurricane, trying to rectify that bank’s troubled assets and find ways to save homeowners with IndyMac mortgages from foreclosure. [caption id="attachment_5957" align="alignleft" width="136" caption="Clare Rowley"][/caption] In July 2008, along with other FDIC colleagues, Rowley was dispatched to Pasadena, California, site of IndyMac’s home office. There she helped implement a mortgage modification program that allowed qualified but struggling mortgage holders to stay in their homes. The FDIC’s modification program, which some called a “Model in a Box,” consisted of three basic parts: lowering interest rates, extending  loan terms, and principal forbearance.  The model worked:  by the spring of 2009, 88 % of modified loans were still in force. When the new Obama administration began tackling the mortgage crisis in mid-2009,

The major focus of the Obama administration's bank rescue plan has been multi-billion dollar direct payments or "bailouts" to Wall Street-connected investment/commercial banks like Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo. In making these payments, the Obama and Treasury Dept. Sec. Tim Geithner repeatedly resisted nationalizing the banks and the once hot-button issue of nationalization has faded from the headlines. But nationalization has continued, and will continue over the next few years, in a different venue:

Why is Paul Volcker head of the White House's Economic Recovery Board? Because he's tall, reports the New York Times' Louis Uchitelle: As Fed chairman from 1979 to 1987, he helped the country weather more than one crisis. And in the campaign last year, he appeared occasionally with Mr. Obama, including a town hall meeting in Florida last fall. His towering presence (he is 6-foot-8) offered reassurance that the candidate’s economic policies, in the midst of a crisis, were trustworthy.

Here's a classic "man bites dog to enable dogs to continue biting men" story. The Wall Street Journal's Damien Paletta reports that banks will give the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation three year's worth of pre-payments so FDIC can replenish its deposit insurance fund. The fund -- funded by annual ...

The Wall Street Journal's David Enrich and Damien Paletta have a good, long article on the financial services industry one year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers: On the regulatory front, Democrats' efforts to rework the rules for finance have bogged down amid infighting between federal regulators, fury among bankers ...

Federal Deposit Insurance Chairman Sheila Bair -- often a lone voice of internal skepticism in Obama administration financial rescue decisions -- has an op-ed in today's New York Times in support of Obama's proposed new regulations of finance. But she argues against an idea that's floated around to have ...

The New York Times has happy news on its front page this morning about federal government intervention into banks and the Wall Street Journal has not so happy news. The Times' Zachary Kouwe reports that the government has now made a $4 billion profit from eight bailed out ...

Jeff Gerth of ProPublica and Brady Dennis of the Washington Post report that GE Capital, the banking arm of General Electric, has issued billions in loans that the Federal Deposit Insurance Coporation guarantees in its Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program. The program started ...