BankThink

The Goose That Laid the Federal Reserve Note

11/30/12

This newly-discovered, expanded version of Aesop's most famous fable bears an eerie resemblance to the modern day and sheds new light on its tragic moral.

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More Mortgage Suits, Troubled Britannia, Shrinking Citi

11/30/12

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Mortgage Morass, Continued: Bankers can be forgiven for mistaking the mortgage cops for a pack of raving hyenas that just won't end its pursuit. In the latest twist, the Justice Department argued Wednesday that the $25 billion mortgage settlement finalized earlier this year between the federal and state governments on one side and five big banks on the other doesn't buy Wells Fargo (WFC) immunity from being sued by the feds yet...

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Why Reputational Risk Is On the Rise

11/30/12

Banks today are struggling to pull together complaints data from multiple sources for analysis, resolution and reporting. There is also the challenge of interacting with customers, especially when something goes wrong.

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Credit Unions Too Small and Too Disciplined to Become TBTF

11/29/12

The average credit union is billions of dollars smaller than the behemoth banks. And the overall quality of credit union business loans is much higher than that of bank commercial loans.

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It's Time to Regulate Prepaid Cards as Bank Accounts

11/29/12

Consumer-focused regulations, in general, should reflect what financial products actually do, not the technicalities of who issues them or what legal status they hold.

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Fed's Tarullo to Barclays and Deutsche Bank: I See What You Did There

11/29/12

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Nice Try, Guys: The Fed will require foreign banks with major operations here to house them in entities subject to the same capital rules as U.S. banks, central bank Gov. Daniel Tarullo said. The papers interpret his speech as a thinly veiled repudiation of Deutsche Bank and Barclays, which moved their stateside investment banking shops out of Fed-supervised holding companies to avoid having to inject them with billions of dollars. The Journal's...

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CFPB Should Create Safe Haven for Innovators

11/29/12

The bureau could offer an X Prize, encouraging companies to solve problems through competition or invite applications from entrepreneurs and financial companies, providing those with the most promising ideas a time-limited waiver for pilot tests.

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How a Seemingly Perfect Loan Can End Up Stinging Your Bank

11/29/12

It would appear that a bank could not negotiate a loan on more favorable terms than the deal I was looking at. Yet, something did not make sense.

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Multifamily Bubble on the Horizon?

11/28/12

The very same low interest rates and easy credit terms that ran up the "for sale" housing business are now busily at work running up the multifamily rental business.

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Banking Needs to Get Over Infatuation with Risk Models

11/28/12

The risk profession continues to aid and abet our tendency to want to quantify everything. But understanding real life is ultimately a social, not physical, science.

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