Joe Mont

After a hectic week of Congressional testimony, there is a better understanding of Facebook’s data protection woes. There is also plenty of fodder for regulatory and compliance debates.

Since the day the Dodd-Frank Act was passed nearly a decade ago, the Volcker rule has been a burr under the saddle for Republicans. Now, their complaints are a lot closer to having a remedy, with plans to ease the rule’s burden on community banks.

SEC Commissioners Michael Piwowar and Hester Peirce are breaking ranks with their peers over the monetary cap assigned to Regulation A exemptions. They want to boost the offering limit for the under-used exemption from $50 million to $75 million.

After months of parsing through comment letters and collecting financial industry feedback, the SEC is ready to inject itself in the controversial effort to create a fiduciary duty regulation for broker-dealers and investment advisers. The Commission has scheduled an open meeting on Wednesday, April 18, to debate a potential rule proposal.

The Justice Department this week seized backpage.com, an online forum for prostitution ads, including those related to child trafficking. Days later, President Trump signed into law a bill that carves away one-time legal protections for such sites.

The Federal Reserve Board is seeking public comments on a proposal intended to simplify its capital rules for large banks and potentially loosen requirements for the stress tests administered to them.

John Williams, current chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, has been appointed to the same position at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He will replace current president William Dudley in June.

Amid its current overhaul under new leadership, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is seeking feedback on its process for logging consumer complaints.

A coalition of attorneys general has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration  and the EPA for “ignoring its legal duty to control emissions of methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas, from existing oil and gas operations.”