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Federal regulators are using powers they gained in the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law to ramp up an inquiry into the recent trading blunders at JPMorgan Chase & Co., the Wall Street Journal reported today. Investigators in the enforcement division of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) are issuing subpoenas requesting emails and other internal JPMorgan documents. The probe focuses on what JPMorgan traders told their supervisors and internal risk-management staff as their wrong-way bets started to sour. If investigators find that employees made deceptive statements to superiors, that could constitute fraud under their authority to police the so-called swaps market. The CFTC inquiry is at a relatively early stage and is not confined to what the traders said.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is slated to testify twice next month before both the House and the Senate, the New York Times' DealBook blog reported yesterday. Dimon agreed to testify before the Senate Banking Committee on June 13. Dimon, who will face questions about his bank’s recent multibillion-dollar trading loss, is also set to appear before a House panel on June 19. The Senate committee initially invited Dimon for June 7, but JPMorgan sought more time.

Payments to creditors of the U.K. arm of MF Global Holdings Ltd. scheduled for next month may be delayed because of a legal dispute over repurchase agreements between the British and American units of the failed broker, Bloomberg News reported today. Louis Freeh, the bankruptcy trustee of parent company MF Global Holdings Ltd., filed a lawsuit in London saying that U.K. administrators KPMG LLP wrongly rejected his claim for the repurchase agreements. Freeh’s rejected claim was for several hundred million dollars. The lawsuit means KPMG cannot make a distribution to creditors under U.K. insolvency rules without a court order, the firm said. An interim dividend to creditors had been scheduled for June 30.

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. said that it would acquire the remaining 26.5 percent of apartment company Archstone that it did not already own from Barclays Capital and Bank of America Corp. for $1.58 billion, Reuters reported on Friday. The last slice of Archstone was critical to Lehman in order to block real estate investment trust Equity Residential from controlling Archstone's fate. In January, Lehman bought half the banks' stake, or 26.5 percent of Archstone, for $1.325 billion. That came after Barclays and Bank of America struck a deal to sell the 26.5 percent stake to Equity Residential, which was also given the right to bid for the banks' remaining stake.

Citigroup Inc., the biggest U.S. bank to have regulators reject its capital plan this year, dismantled a board committee created during the credit crisis to police the disposal of toxic and unwanted assets, Bloomberg News reported today. About $200 billion of such assets remained when directors broke up the Citi Holdings oversight panel last month under new Chairman Michael O’Neill. Assets in Citi Holdings have shrunk from $600 billion since Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit created the unit after the bank almost collapsed in 2008. The division, which has posted losses of $19 billion since its inception, still holds Spanish and Greek loans, overdue U.S. mortgages, bonds worth a fraction of their face value and a consumer-finance lender that Pandit has yet to sell.

Most Americans at least occasionally spend more than they make, but they're mostly OK with that, Fox Business reported today. The May 2012 COUNTRY Financial Security Index indicated that while 52 percent of respondents spent in excess of their monthly income in at least a couple of months of each year, only 9 percent said their lifestyle is more than they can afford. On a positive note, the survey found 51 percent of respondents had a household budget in place. "Half of Americans have taken an important first step in setting up a budget," said Keith Brannan, vice president of financial security planning for COUNTRY Financial. "But a budget is only helpful if it's realistic and tailored to your situation." COUNTRY Financial identified a "perception gap" between how individuals view their finances and their actual spending habits. Perhaps because most families have a budget, they don't see their overspending as a problem. To compensate for excess expenses, those surveyed used a variety of tactics: 36.2 percent used money from a savings account, 21.7 percent used a credit card, 12.3 percent delayed bill payments and 7.8 percent borrowed money.

MasterCard Inc. lost a court challenge that sought to overturn a European Union decision that the company's cross-border card fees violated antitrust rules, Bloomberg News reported today. The EU's General Court backed the European Commission’s decision that MasterCard unfairly inflated the transaction fees paid by retailers for processing payments, according to a statement from the court today. MasterCard's "approach tends to overestimate the costs borne by the issuing banks and, moreover, inadequately to assess the advantages which merchants derive from that form of payment," the Luxembourg-based tribunal said in the ruling.

U.S. Trustee Roberta A. DeAngelis objected to Solyndra LLC's motion to increase its debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing, saying that the solar panel maker has not shown significant progress with its plans to emerge from bankruptcy protection, Reuters reported today. Solyndra, which received $535 million in federal loan guarantees, filed for bankruptcy last September as it succumbed to pressure from Chinese rivals. The company, which is yet to file a reorganization plan, has failed so far to attract bids from buyers who could restart production. Solyndra, which received $4 million in DIP financing from venture capital firm Argonaut Ventures LLC, is seeking to borrow an additional $3 million to help it pay administrative expenses. In her motion, DeAngelis said that it was not clear why the company had an immediate need to pay more on professional fees, especially as there has been no sign of significant progress on a reorganization plan.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. was sued by a former employee seeking to represent participants in the bank's retirement plan who lost money on company stock the plan held after the bank reported a $2 billion trading loss, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The complaint filed on Monday by Gregory Scrydloff accuses New York-based JPMorgan of making misstatements about its financial health that allowed the company's stock to trade at inflated prices between April 13, when the company reported earnings, and May 10, when Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon disclosed the trading loss. Last week, an Arizona trust filed a securities-fraud lawsuit seeking to represent all investors who lost money on the stock as a result of alleged misstatements by the bank about its losses. In another case filed last week, an individual investor asked for damages on behalf of the company from Dimon, the bank's board and other executives.

The Senate Banking Committee's Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Subcommittee will hold a hearing at 10 a.m. ET today titled "Implementing Derivatives Reform: Reducing Systemic Risk and Improving Market Oversight." Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro and Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman are the witnesses scheduled to appear before the committee. For prepared witness testimony, please click here: http://banking.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&…