BankThink

By Jim Bullard's Logic, It's Time to Break Up the Fed

05/14/13

The central bank is too big, too leveraged, extremely short-funded and a frequent creator through its interest rate and money-printing actions of gigantic systemic risk.

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Brown-Vitter Capital Standard Trumps Risk-Based System

05/14/13

The bill would replace the misleading risk-based capital system with a straightforward way to determine the true health of an institution, in addition to providing incentives for the largest banks to downsize.

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'Bruno from London' New Nickname for Blue Whale at American Museum of Natural History

05/14/13

Receiving Wide Coverage ... More JPMeeting Previews: JPMorgan's annual meeting is a week from today, and the curtain-raisers keep coming. "Shareholders are taking a close look at financial relationships between some J.P. Morgan Chase board members and the company they oversee," according to the Journal. For example, the bank underwrote a bond issue, provided a line of credit and made charitable contributions to the American Museum of Natural History, run by Ellen Futter, a JPMorgan director.…

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The Risks of Oversimplifying Stress Test Models

05/14/13

It’s important that models for stress-testing be capable of representing the nuances of the questions they are asked to answer. Insights would be lost if models are kept too simple.

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Behind the Bank M&A Drought

05/13/13

Bank M&A “rainmakers” have been trying to make it rain for years. Most have little to show for it. Buy-side advisers that have made it rain often end up with disappointed clients.

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Bank Discrimination Suit Highlights D.C. Insanity

05/13/13

Bankers truly face a Catch-22 in the lending business these days, thanks to "qualified mortgage" and disparate impact laws.

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Pushovers in the Boardroom; Serial Bungling in the Foreclosure Settlement; Should Art Galleries File SARs?

05/13/13

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Doormat Directors: With little more than a week to go before JPMorgan's annual meeting, some shareholders are wondering whether Lee Raymond, the board's lead director, "has been an effective counterbalance" to chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon, the Times reports. If they conclude that Raymond, a former CEO of Exxon-Mobil, has been too lax in his oversight of the bank's management, these shareholders may vote to split the chairman and CEO roles. In...

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More than Regulation Is Killing Small Banks

05/13/13

The gradual erosion of net interest margins and a compensatory shift toward risky new lending strategies for additional yield is a major factor for high chargeoffs and community bank failures.

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OpRisk, the New Six Sigma; Debating the Leverage Ratio; Is Money Laundering a Real Crime?

05/10/13

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

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The Problem with Prepaid: $45 Million ATM Heist Edition

05/10/13

The recent crime spree that netted $45 million in fraudulent ATM withdrawals adds to the many reasons banks approach prepaid products with caution.

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