BankThink

Receiving Wide Coverage ... Brushing the Dust Off IT: Banks around the world use IT systems are basically antiques, and recent tech glitches at Royal Bank of Scotland and Commonwealth Bank of Australia are making that problem increasingly difficult to ignore. The Financial Times reports that part of the issue is that three-quarters of banks' tech spending has to go toward the cost of keeping the old, complex systems running, leaving them with just a fractionÂ...

It's hard to get consumers and merchants to change their behaviors. But eventually the convenience and well-crafted incentives of mobile payments will prompt people to give up the plastic habit.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Rate-Hike Watch: The Federal Reserve still plans to raise rates later this year. But much like an overbooked friend, it prefers to keep its level of commitment to that plan soft. Both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal emphasize that the pace of the eventual rate hike is likely to be even slower than expected. The central bank may increase rates just once in 2015, by a quarter percentage...

The FDIC is proposing a complicated and expensive record-keeping requirement to prepare for the unlikely event that it liquidates a large failed institution instead of transferring its deposits to another bank.

Some argue that nonbank mortgage lenders' rising market share poses a risk to the financial system. But this belief arises from an inaccurate understanding of what is in fact a well-regulated sector.