While most of us spent the past two weeks gathering with family and friends, financial reform news barely slowed down to acknowledge the holidays. From Wall Street’s latest attack on the Volcker Rule, to the Department of Justice’s refusal to pursue criminal allegations against JP Morgan for ignoring the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, to academics refusing to disclose their ties to Wall Street, it was a busy few weeks. To ring in the New Year, here are some of the important financial reform stories that you may have missed:

• The Rumored Chase-Madoff Settlement Is Another Bad Joke (Rolling Stone)
• JPMorgan Doesn’t Want to Talk About Bernie Madoff (Newsweek)
• Behind the Headline Numbers of a Mortgage Settlement (New York Times)
• Financial Regulators’ Fine Mess (Project Syndicate)
• Off Limits, but Blessed by the Fed (The New York Times)
• 2013 Was a Bad Year for Wall St. Lobbyists (New Republic)
• “Green Shoots”: The Year in Wall Street Reform (Campaign for America’s Future)
• Gary Gensler defends record as he leaves CFTC (Financial Times)
• Academics Who Defend Wall St. Reap Reward (The New York Times)
• A Small Bank in Utah Has Launched Wall Street’s War on the Volcker Rule (New Republic)
• If memory swerves: The 1 percent laughs last, as Wall Street wins again; Five years after wrecking our economy, the big banks are back. Here’s why we need real government regulations (Salon)
• Regulators Have New Cases of Frauds and Abuses to Tackle (New York Times)
• Deutsche Bank to Pay $1.9 Billion Over Troubled Mortgage Securities (New York Times)
• Delay and Pray Is the European Union’s Specialty (Bloomberg)
• America in 2013, as Told in Charts (New York Times)
• Sheila Bair’s graph of the year: For many Americans, there’s been no recovery at all (Washington Post)
• The Fear Economy (New York Times)
• Citigroup: A Case Study in Managerial and Regulatory Failures (SSRN)