The Supreme Court of Washington has upheld a lender’s right to pursue a deficiency judgment against a guarantor following a nonjudicial foreclosure of collateral under Washington’s Deed of Trust Act.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's ("CFPB") recently issued Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking ("ANPR") announced its intention to extend Regulation E ("Reg E") protections to certain general purpose reloadable prepaid cards ("GPR cards"), which protections do not currently apply to GPR cards.  CFPB's stated goals are to (1) insure consistent minimum standards across similar financial products, (2) allow consumers to easily compare products by insuring disclosure transparency and (3) appropriately allocate fraud and loss risks.  CFPB is soliciting public comments on this topic until July 23, 2012.

On July 21, 2010, President Barack Obama signed into law the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, or the Financial Reform Act, declaring the Financial Reform Act to contain "the strongest consumer financial protections in history."

The U.S. Treasury Department, chair of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States ("CFIUS"), recently published guidance on the types of transactions previously reviewed by CFIUS that have presented national security considerations ("Guidance").  The Guidance is intended to provide insight into how CFIUS identifies the national security effects of covered transactions and may assist parties considering whether to file a voluntary notice of a transaction with CFIUS [1]. This is an important determination because, although filing a CFIUS notice is voluntary, the parties may be forced to unwind a transaction where no filing was made if the President later determines it poses national security risks.