Government

Chicago-based Performance Trust Investment Advisors, LLC, a banking and investment advisory firm, has created a virtual forum at a new Web site (marktomarketdebate.com) to help the financial sector and the public better understand how fair value standards, also known as mark-to-market, and related accounting and bank regulatory rules impact bank lending.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner laid out the new administration’s highly-anticipated blueprint for the nation’s economic recovery Tuesday morning in Washington. In his remarks, Geithner said, The financial system is working against recovery, and that’s the dangerous dynamic we need to change.

The U.S. Senate voted 61-to-37 to approve an $838 billion stimulus package on Tuesday. Dissension over the bill fell largely along party lines. Next come negotiations with the House, who approved their own version of the stimulus in late January, with an $820 billion price tag.

New legislation has been introduced to the U.S. Senate that would prevent financial holding companies and national banks from engaging, directly or indirectly, in real estate brokerage or real estate management activities.

The Texas Bankers Association (TBA), the largest and oldest state banking association in the nation, has expanded its endorsement of Wolters Kluwer Financial Services’ regulatory compliance and risk management solutions to include several of the company’s mortgage compliance documentation solutions.

In the midst of continuing media coverage surrounding U.S. banks’ failure to lend and their use of federal bailout money, Anthony J. Carfang and Cathryn R. Gregg of Chicago-based Treasury Strategies, Inc.

In the first 30 days of the new presidential administration, the urgency to deal with the nation’s banking and financial crisis has taken top priority. The crisis has escalated and many potential resolutions are being explored – case in point, on Friday, President Obama named former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, along with 15 other leaders from various industries to an independent committee designed to help the White House combat a growing recession.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is expected to lay out the new administration’s comprehensive Financial Stability and Recovery Plan on Tuesday, detailing how the government will use the remainder of the $700 billion bailout money, as well as additional programs it hopes will kick-start the U.

President Barack Obama named the members of his new Economic Recovery Advisory Board on Friday – a team that he says will bring with it fresh ideas that go beyond the walls of Washington. The group of outside advisers will offer independent advice to the White House to help the administration craft an effective response to the nation’s growing recession.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), regulator of the nation’s GSEs and the more than $6.3 trillion in mortgage funding they supply, released its November Foreclosure Prevention Report today.