By Dan Burrows

The following is part of InvestorPlace's Future of Financials series.

Financial reform, with the enactment of Dodd-Frank and the creation of the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau, hasn't been the death by a thousand cuts that banks said it would be -- but it has added uncertainty and taken bites out of their revenues.

Now, just when the nation's financial institutions had largely adjusted to this brave new regulatory world, JPMorgan Chase's (JPM) $2 billion-and-counting​ trading loss has put the Volcker Rule back at the top of regulators' agenda.

And that's the last thing investors in bank stocks needed.

 

By Ben Nanamaker

Since the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote was passed more than 90 years ago, great strides have been made in the realm of political equality.

In that time, we have seen the first female Cabinet member (Frances Perkins, appointed Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor in 1933), Supreme Court justice (Sandra Day O’Connor) and the first major party vice presidential nominee (Geraldine Ferraro), among many other milestones.

 

By David Francis

Right now, the U.S. Federal Housing Authority is offering historically low interest rates on home loans as part of an effort to kick-start the housing market. Under a plan introduced by President Barack Obama, an FHA-qualifying U.S. homebuyer can apply for a 30-year mortgage with a fixed interest rate of 3.75 percent and a 15-year fixed mortgage at 3 percent. FHA loans require as little as 3.5 percent of the home’s value up front in the form of a down payment.

Compare this to a traditional mortgage offered by a private bank. Private banks require large down payments of buyers – traditionally 20 percent – to qualify for a low interest rate. 

Updated 3:30 p.m. ET

By Jonathan Berr

Sorry, Republicans, but rich people are not "job creators." They never have been and never will be. No one ever invests in anything to create jobs. Employing people is a by-product of capitalism.

Those are the views of the venture capitalist Nick Hanauer, a multimillionaire who was recently invited to speak at a TED conference. The conferences are well-known gatherings featuring talks on a variety of topics and can be viewed online. 

By Wendy Simmons

After John McCain’s now notoriously bad "game change" in picking Sarah Palin as his vice president in 2008, many political observers expect Mitt Romney to choose a plain-vanilla running mate (e.g., Rob Portman of Ohio) to face Obama in the fall.

However, as the GOP works hard to overcome the 19-point advantage Obama has among female voters, the Romney campaign is likely to consider choosing a woman to join him on the ticket. Let’s review five possibilities, ranging the from the most similar to Palin to the most different.

 

By Hans Nichols and Julianna Goldman

 

President Barack Obama's campaign took aim at Republican Mitt Romney's private equity experience on a day when the president was raising money at the New York apartment of Blackstone Group president Tony James.

 

A television advertisement scheduled to run in five swing states features interviews with former workers at a Kansas City, Mo., steel mill that was taken over in 1993 by Boston-based Bain Capital LLC, the private-equity firm co-founded by Romney.

 

"Bain Capital was the majority owner. They were responsible," said David Foster, who is identified in the ad as the lead negotiator for workers at GST Steel, which filed for bankruptcy in 2001.

 

By David J. Lynch

 

Shortly after his election as governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney gathered the people who would fill the state's top jobs for a get-acquainted luncheon.

 

As the group tucked in to plates of pasta salad and greens, Romney -- like the management consultant he once was -- distributed a paper explaining his operating style. About a dozen bullet points, including "talk to each other, not about each other" and "family first," filled the pages.

 

Beyond the bromides, Romney outlined the disciplined, data-driven process that had made him wealthy and then helped him rescue the 2002 Winter Olympics from scandal.

 

Ditching the U.S. to save a boatload on taxes. Is it the new American ideal?

I am referring, of course, to the case of Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin. We recently learned that the 30-year-old has renounced his U.S. citizenship and now lives in tax-friendly Singapore. While Saverin undoubtedly likes Singapore -- he certainly seems to enjoy the country's nightclubs and supermodels -- there's little doubt that tax considerations also spurred the move.