BankThink

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Not So Fast: So now that Standard & Poor's has signed off on a $1.5 billion settlement, you'd think the credit ratings agency would be able to move on from the incident and reclaim the industry's reputation? Not so fast, my friend. The Journal takes a closer look at a statement of facts signed by the Justice Department and S&P, and finds troubling signs. The New York Times, on the other hand,...

Bank managers can motivate their teams to make sales without forcing them to pounce on customers the moment they walk in the door.

Revising the current control rules could give banks access to more capital from private equity, hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Wall Street Journal Edwin Hale Sr., the founder and former chief executive of First Mariner Bancorp in Baltimore, confessed that he covertly worked for the Central Intelligence Agency for about 10 years in the 1990s and 2000s. Hale made the confession in his recently published biography, "Hale Storm." The CIA used agents posing as employees of Hale's bank (the article doesn't specify whether they were employees of First Mariner, or of Bank of Baltimore, Hale's previousÂ...

Two Republican legislators have suggested that affordable housing funding should be put on hold until Congress finally decides what to do about Fannie and Freddie. But why give Congress another six years to fiddle around with housing finance while the poor and homeless face a declining level of government housing assistance?