Regulators

In the Bank of Credit and Commerce International scandal, as in other scams of our age of go-go finance (including the S&L debacle), it would appear that regulators everywhere took their sweet time detecting the pollution. As usual there is in BCCI's exposure and indictment as a criminal enterprise the sound of barn doors resolutely slammed behind long-escaped horses. BCCI, in case you missed the details, is the huge international banking operation - founded in Pakistan, chartered in Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands, and headquartered in the City of London - whose operations bank regulators shut down earlier this month.

Federal regulators yesterday took over Springfield Federal Savings & Loan Association, removing the Delaware County S&L's top officers and installing a management team from the Resolution Trust Corp., the federal agency that runs or closes failed thrifts. The Office of Thrift Supervision said it had acted because Springfield Federal had been "operating in an unsafe and unsound condition" and had nearly run out of capital. The federal agency blamed Springfield's problems on "inadequate internal controls" as well as "losses on poorly underwritten commercial loans" and loans for real estate development.

State regulators closed the Pulaski Savings Bank in Philadelphia yesterday, saying that fraudulent loan activity had made the small institution insolvent. The bank's only office, on Orthodox Street in the Northeast, will reopen Monday as a branch of Earthstar Bank, Southampton, Bucks County. Pulaski held deposits of $9 million. William Schenck, the state's secretary of banking, declined to elaborate on the fraudulent loans. "It was senior management," he said late yesterday.

Casino gambling has gone corporate and New Jersey's gaming regulators might be better served with a degree from the Wharton School rather than one from the state police academy. That was the message yesterday from Anthony J. Parrillo, director of the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement, in an appearance at the monthly Atlantic City Press Club luncheon. "Pending sales, new partnerships, corporate mergers and financial restructurings - all reflecting a period of consolidation and reorganization in a maturing casino industry - have brought to the fore new areas of concern for regulators," Parrillo said.

A small political flap has erupted over a planned meeting in Detroit of utility company executives and top regulatory officials from Michigan, Pennsylvania and several other states. Environmental advocacy groups - none of which were invited - contend the meeting was put together by Republicans who want to weaken environmental enforcement standards if Texas Gov. George W. Bush wins the presidency. Bush aides and state officials say this is nonsense. "There they go again," said Deb Callahan, president of the League of Conservation Voters.

Parke Bank, of Sewell, said it reached agreements with federal and state regulators that require it to clean up its balance sheet by eliminating assets from its books that have already been classified as a loss, among other measures. The bank entered into the consent orders with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance after a recent regulatory examination. Parke had net loans of $605.79 million on Dec. 31 and reported net income of $7.27 million for the year.

RICHMOND, Va. - Virginia regulators have approved FirstEnergy Corp.'s proposed acquisition of Allegheny Energy Inc. The companies announced the deal's approval by the State Corporation Commission on Friday. Akron, Ohio-based FirstEnergy announced in February that it was buying Greensburg, Pa.-based Allegheny Energy in a stock deal that would form one of the biggest power companies in the country, made up of 10 utilities serving 6.1 million customers from Ohio to New Jersey. The companies sought approval from Virginia regulators because Allegheny Energy owns transmission assets in Virginia through Potomac Edison and the Trans-Allegheny Interstate Line Company.

State insurance regulators have seized and closed a West Chester life insurance company that they said had been insolvent for nearly three years. Commonwealth Court had allowed Corporate Life Insurance Co., based at 893 S. Matlack St., West Chester, to continue selling policies until this week. Officials of the Pennsylvania Department of Insurance took over Corporate Life, a $275 million company, Tuesday evening, dismissed its officers and its lawyers and announced that the company would be liquidated.

Consider this: A stream of raw sewage stealthily wending its way down the Delaware River and its tributaries. Two recent state loans - totaling $2.64 million - to the Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority (CCMUA) are designed to wipe that image from your mind and improve water quality during the next two years along towns bordering the Delaware River south of Philadelphia. The money from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and Energy (DEPE) will be used to repair and upgrade 29 regulator gates in Gloucester City and Camden through which 5 million to 6 million gallons of raw sewage is dumped daily into the Delaware.

Joseph E. Stiglitz is a Nobel laureate in economics, and author of Freefall: Free Markets and the Sinking of the Global Economy It has taken almost two years since the collapse of Lehman Bros., and more than three years since the beginning of the global recession brought on by the financial sector's misdeeds for the United States and Europe to reform financial regulation. Perhaps we should celebrate the regulatory victories. After all, there is almost universal agreement that the crisis the world is facing - and is likely to continue to face for years - is a result of the excesses of the deregulation movement begun under Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan 30 years ago. Unfettered markets are neither efficient nor stable.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Thursday ordered the owners of nearly a third of all U.S. nuclear reactors to add venting systems to their containment buildings to prevent the pressure-induced explosions that plagued the Fukushima reactors in Japan in 2011. The order pertains to 31 boiling-water reactors, including Exelon Corp.'s Limerick Generating Station, Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station and Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in New Jersey; PPL Corp.'s Susquehanna Steam Generating Station, and PSEG Nuclear's Hope Creek Generating Station.

The man who created and then lost the vast Cherry Hill-based Commerce Bank network wrapped up his time on the witness stand in federal court in Camden Monday insisting that millions in compensation is being improperly withheld from him. "I want the jury," Vernon Hill testified, "to enforce the terms of my employment agreement. " In January 2008, six months after Hill was ousted as chairman, president, and chief executive at Commerce, he filed a lawsuit asking the bank, which by then had been acquired by TD Bank, to make good on his contract.

Whether the jury will feel sympathy for Vernon W. Hill 2d, the ousted founder of Commerce Bank, and his legal quest to wrest $17.2 million in golden parachute benefits from the bank remains to be seen. In federal court Thursday, Hill explained why he didn't fight his June 28, 2007, firing from the banking empire that he had built from one storefront in Marlton in 1973. "This was my bank," Hill said in U.S. District Judge Robert B. Kugler's Camden courtroom. "It was obvious to me that the best thing for the bank was for me to leave.

From the testimony, everyone agreed that former Commerce Bank chairman, president, and chief executive Vernon Hill, ousted in the summer of 2007 from the bank he founded, deserved to receive the "golden parachute" provisions negotiated in his employment contract. Everybody, that is, except the regulators, including the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the board of governors of the Federal Reserve. The question in court now is whether officials of Commerce Bank, now TD Financial Group, tried hard enough to persuade the regulators.

Whenever John Aponik cuts the grass, bits of blue tarp get caught in the blades of his lawn mower. Around Christmas, "it gets in all the wreaths," Aponik said of the tarp that has been shredding off the house next door to his on Glen Lane in Cherry Hill, where a renovation project was abandoned four years ago. No one has lived in the house since then, Aponik said, although it isn't exactly vacant. "Raccoons, possums - cats were breeding out there," Aponik said, who has set traps lent to him by a neighbor.

In Tennessee, welfare benefits may be reduced for families whose children get bad grades in school. The plan, laid out in a bill that has cleared committees in the state's House and Senate, touched off an uproar. Quickly, the legislation was amended to say the money would not be cut if the parents attended parenting classes or got tutors for their children. Still, anger persists about the bill. No such bill exists in Pennsylvania or New Jersey. But 15 cosponsors in the Pennsylvania legislature are backing a bill by State Sen. John Wozniak (D., Cambria)

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D., N.J.), plans Wednesday to introduce what he hopes will be signature legislation for his final term in office - a bill aimed at ensuring the safety of the many chemicals that Americans come in contact with every day. The measure would give regulatory officials the authority to evaluate the safety of the flame retardants in couches, the phthalate compounds responsible for the smell of new vinyl shower curtains, the bisphenol...

Gov. Christie has signed legislation that bars anyone under 17 from using tanning beds in New Jersey and anyone under 14 from getting a spray tan. The measure signed Monday night allows 17-year-olds to use a tanning salon provided their parent or guardian accompanies them on their first visit and gives their consent. The legislation was developed after a North Jersey mother was charged with child endangerment in April 2012 for allegedly bringing her 5-year-old daughter into a tanning booth.

HARRISBURG - It wasn't exactly pork-barrel legislation. But at a time when lawmakers are wrestling over whether to privatize state liquor stores after 80 years of discussion, a bill to change the definition of wild animals in Pennsylvania zipped through the Senate in 21/2 weeks - like, some might say, a greased pig. The bill, sponsored by Senate President Joe Scarnati (R., Jefferson), would establish that captive feral swine - those used in hunting preserves - are not wild animals and therefore do not fall under the auspices of the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

WASHINGTON - Two years after the nuclear crisis in Japan, the top U.S. regulator says American nuclear power plants are safer than ever, though not trouble-free. A watchdog group calls that assessment overly rosy. "The performance is quite good," Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman Allison Macfarlane said in an interview. All but five of the nation's 104 nuclear reactors were performing at acceptable safety levels at the end of 2012, Macfarlane said, citing a recent NRC report.