BankThink

A recap of the informed opinions (and the discussions they generated) on BankThink this week.

Receiving Wide Coverage ... Fighting over Fannie and Freddie: The Washington Post reports on the coalition of small investors, civil rights and business groups opposed to housing reform legislation, their well-funded ad blitz to "save" Fannie and Freddie, and the likely outcome of the current court battle challenging the government's seizure of the enterprises in 2008. The Wall Street Journal reports Fannie and Freddie "had another blockbuster quarter," earning a combined $10.2 billion, most of itÂ...

No company should be designated as a systemically important financial institution before the Financial Stability Oversight Council knows what "more stringent" prudential standards the Federal Reserve will apply to it.

Higher regulatory and compliance costs may push more small banks to sell themselves or merge with larger institutions. But so far, community bank consolidation rates are following historical patterns.

Receiving Wide Coverage ... Bigger than Facebook: It's all Alibaba, all the time. The Chinese e-commerce company released the prospectus for its U.S. IPO and the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal all lavished heaps of coverage on the disclosure. For the banking world, the most-interesting item was the document's identification of the lucky banks that stand to make millions of dollars in fees from the offering. Credit Suisse nabbed the coveted leadÂ...