The regulatory reform bill just signed into law by President Trump marks an important return to the tradition of bipartisanship, and offers a roadmap for the future. (ABA Banking Journal)

Home equity jumped 13.3 percent in the first quarter of this year compared to a year earlier, according to recent data from CoreLogic. For the average borrower, that translates to $16,300 in additional home equity gained during the year, the biggest gain in four years. (CNBC)

As the leader of a 32-person R&D team helping U.S. Bank’s business lines implement new technology and scout out the most promising financial innovations, Dominic Venturo is on the front lines of fintech innovation in the banking world. On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast, Venturo talks about recent and upcoming innovations that U.S. Bank is rolling out. (ABA Banking Journal)

U.S. economic growth could face a challenging slowdown as the Trump Administration’s powerful fiscal stimulus fades after two years, according to former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. (Bloomberg)

Consumer Sentiment declined 0.8 points in May to 98.0, according to the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index. May’s figure is 0.9% above the May 2017 index. (ABA Banking Journal)

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau should target its rulemaking process more precisely on the consumer harms it seeks to address and do so in a clear, simple and transparent manner, ABA said in a comment letter to the bureau. The letter — the seventh of 12 that the association will submit in response to the bureau’s ongoing feedback initiative — made several specific recommendations to improve the CFPB’s rulemaking. (ABA Banking Journal)

By a voice vote, the Senate has passed H.R. 4743, a bipartisan bill that will strengthen the Small Business Administration’s oversight of its loan programs and increase its maximum lending authority. The bill passed the House last month and now heads to the White House for the president’s signature. (ABA Banking Journal)

The FDIC board and the OCC formally proposed the interagency revisions to the Volcker Rule that were unveiled by the Federal Reserve, and the banking agencies are no longer enforcing Volcker for banks and holding companies subject to the exemption under the recently enacted S. 2155 regulatory reform bill. (ABA Banking Journal)

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission voted this week to set the swap dealer de minimis threshold at $8 billion on a permanent basis. The threshold had been scheduled to drop to $3 billion at the end of 2019, but Chairman Christopher Giancarlo had pledged a permanent resolution before then. (ABA Banking Journal)

Economists are increasingly united in their belief that unemployment in the U.S. can't go much lower without causing inflation. They are less united, however, in their belief that the Federal Reserve should be aggressively raising interest rates to prevent wages and prices from rising too fast. (Bloomberg View)

The chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said this week that that the agency should not change its longstanding definition about what constitutes a security to ease the rules for cryptocurrencies. (The Hill)