WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. banking regulators do not expect proposed rules requiring financial institutions to hold more capital to take effect on January 1, as regulators work through a flood of industry comments on the proposals.

Regulators have received more than 2,000 comment letters since the rules were proposed in June to implement the international agreement on bank capital known as Basel III.

Nov 8 (Reuters) – The U.S. Postal Service expects package
deliveries during the holiday season to jump 20 percent from
last year, as Americans do more shopping online.

The Postal Service said it forecast delivering 365 million
packages, a 20 percent increase over 2011.

By Sarah N. Lynch and Emily Stephenson and Rick Rothacker

(Reuters) – Wall Street firms gambled on Mitt Romney and lost. Now, faced with the prospect of even tougher regulations in President Barack Obama’s second term, they have to build better ties with the new financial regulators he will appoint.

Obama lost the support of many bankers in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and the passage of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law, which sought to shore up the financial system but also cost banks billions of dollars in annual profit.

WASHINGTON, Oct 22 (Reuters) – New York’s top state bank
regulator called on Washington on Monday to spare community
banks from the most complex parts of new rules requiring more
capital to withstand financial shocks.

Benjamin Lawsky, head of the New York State Department of
Financial Services, said in a letter to federal regulators that
the proposed stricter capital rules would be an undue burden on
community banks.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – New York’s top state bank regulator called on Washington on Monday to spare community banks from the most complex parts of new rules requiring more capital to withstand financial shocks.

Benjamin Lawsky, head of the New York State Department of Financial Services, said in a letter to federal regulators that the proposed stricter capital rules would be an undue burden on community banks.

WASHINGTON, Oct 22 (Reuters) – New York’s top state bank
regulator called on Washington on Monday to spare community
banks from the most complex parts of new rules requiring more
capital to withstand financial shocks.

Benjamin Lawsky, head of the New York State Department of
Financial Services, said in a letter to federal regulators that
the proposed stricter capital rules would be an undue burden on
community banks.

WASHINGTON, Oct 19 (Reuters) – The new U.S. risk council has
moved closer to deciding whether Prudential Financial is
“systemically important,” a Prudential spokesman said on Friday,
a tag that would translate into greater regulatory scrutiny for
the second-largest U.S. life insurer.

The 2010 Dodd-Frank law gave the Financial Stability
Oversight Council (FSOC), which is chaired by Treasury Secretary
Timothy Geithner, the power to name large non-bank financial
firms with the “systemically important” tag if it feels their
collapse could send shock-waves through the U.S. financial
system.

WASHINGTON/CHICAGO, Oct 10 (Reuters) – The top U.S. futures
regulator said he would support appealing a court ruling last
month that struck down his agency’s attempt to place limits on
speculation in commodity markets.

Gary Gensler, chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading
Commission, said on Wednesday that his agency drafted the
original rule at the direction of U.S. Congress. The rule, which
was to have taken effect this month, limited the number of
contracts traders can hold in 28 commodities, including oil,
coffee and gold.

By Emily Stephenson

(Reuters) – U.S. regulators on Tuesday approved a plan that would give smaller banks an extra year before they must begin conducting annual stress tests to determine if they can withstand a financial shock.

Stress tests are intended to demonstrate how banks would cope with a crisis and are part of more rigorous testing required by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial oversight law. The largest U.S. banks face several such regulatory tests.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – State Street Corp and Bank of New York Mellon Corp have submitted their living wills to banking regulators, the Federal Reserve announced on Thursday.

The plans give regulators a road map for dismantling the firms if they become insolvent and are aimed at easing concerns that some banks are so big and complex that their failure could destabilize the financial system.