A group of US House Democrats is strategizing to strip the most contentious derivatives language from legislation to overhaul the financial-regulatory system.

Representative Michael McMahon, a New York Democrat who played a role in shaping the House derivatives language passed last year, said he will work to remove a provision in the Senate legislation that would force commercial banks such as Goldman Sachs Group and JPMorgan Chase to move their swaps- trading operations to subsidiaries.

Like an Apollo moon shot, the pending financial regulatory overhaul is a noble, necessary undertaking.

Yet its success depends on so many intricate, human systems—panels, oversight committees and refashioned bureaucracies—that we should prepare for multiple malfunctions along the way. The new law will hurtle us somewhere, just probably not where Congress intends. That seems especially so for a pending overhaul of the credit-ratings agencies, which famously flubbed their duties during the mortgage boom last decade.

Banks are boosting efforts to sell distressed US home loans, according to two buyers of the debt.

Lenders have sought bids on about $10bn of troubled mortgages in recent months, more than in all of 2008 and 2009, and probably disposed of about $3bn of those, Jon Daurio, chief executive officer of Kondaur Capital Corp., said Monday during a panel discussion at the Mortgage Bankers Association conference in New York.

If [anyone has] been in the market for a mortgage recently, you've no doubt noticed how difficult it can be to get approved.

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Paul McFadden, a loan officer with The Legacy Group in Bellevue, Washington, says, "These days, the number of mortgage applications that get approved is probably three out of 10. In the heyday, it was nine out of 10. Normally five or six out of 10 would be the ratio."

Depositors in the United Kingdom (UK) could lose money if their bank fails, under proposals by one of Britain’s most prominent banking chiefs. Peter Sands, chief executive of Standard Chartered, said that people with savings above any sum guaranteed by law — £50,000 [US$71,731] in the UK — should be hit with other providers of capital if a bank fails.

Sands aired the idea yesterday when Northern Rock, which was nationalized in 2008, lifted a guarantee on deposits put in place in September 2007 by Alistair Darling to stop a run on the bank.

Weeks after lots in the stalled Liberty Harbor development were unsuccessfully put up for auction for unpaid property taxes, a bank has filed to foreclose on some lots owned by the developer of the property, Gary Waxman.

Waxman did not immediately return a telephone call Monday, nor has he spoken with Brunswick Mayor Bryan Thompson in some time.

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The foreclosures come on the heels of a tax auction at the beginning of the month.

The Conference Board's US Consumer Confidence index rose to a new cycle high of 63.3 in May, from 57.7 (was 57.9) in April, 46.4 in February, and 56.5 in January. Yet despite the climb from the dismal February reading, we are still in recession territory, though we are at least now well above the 47.3 all-time low from before this cycle, seen in February 1992, and the pre-1992 record low of 50.1 in May 1980.