The Americas Center of the Atlanta Fed recently held a conference in Miami to spur dialogue and collaboration among institutions and nonprofit groups that want to bring more people into the mainstream banking system.

The Atlanta Fed's Retail Payments Risk Forum's blog, Portals and Rails, focuses specifically on retail payments risk. The blog's readers are encouraged to discuss issues related to payments fraud, payments risk management, operational risks, and other concerns.

The Fed recently broadened a program intended to stimulate bank lending and released the results of recent tests of the financial conditions of the 19 largest U.S. bank holding companies.

At the Atlanta Fed's Financial Markets Conference, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke detailed how the federal banking supervisory agencies assessed the health of the nation's 19 largest banking companies.

The Atlanta Fed's 2009 Financial Markets Conference recently assembled policymakers, academics, and practitioners to consider how financial markets might evolve and the ways policy might contribute to that evolution.

Banking and credit agencies have proposed clarifications to some recently enacted rules. The clarifications would prohibit certain credit card practices and improve the disclosures consumers receive about credit card accounts and other revolving credit card plans.

A recently announced program from the Fed's automated clearinghouse will speed the clearing of some check transactions, helping financial institutions identify potentially fraudulent transactions and take corrective action sooner.

Recent actions taken by the Federal Reserve to increase market liquidity include changes to some existing programs targeting banks' participation in financial markets and the extension of other programs designed to provide market liquidity.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke recently talked about reforming the approach to financial regulation in the United States and discussed adopting an approach that monitors, assesses, and addresses potential systemic risks.

In recent speeches, Federal Reserve Gov. Elizabeth Duke discussed the need for both policymakers and bankers to take the steps necessary to stabilize the nation's troubled housing markets.