CreditSlips

This just in from Ireland:  A large mortgage bank there, AIB, has agreed to a plan to split some mortgages into a "good" tranche, equal to 80% of the current market value of the home (forgiving the other 20% of that tranche) and another, "bad" tranche equal to the remaining, underwater portion of the mortgage loan.

The postal banking idea has been getting a lot of attention.  See, e.g., here (David Dayen) and here (Elizabeth Warren). Yet, the more I think about it, the more I wonder if the postal part of the idea is actually convoluting things.

I've got an op-ed about postal banking in today's American Banker.  Basic point:  there's a tension between doing postal banking to generate revenue for the Post Office and doing postal banking for financial inclusion.  But it's an idea worth exploring. 

Like Pamela, I’m very delighted to join Credit Slips. As Bob mentioned in his kind introduction, I spent a year as a policy fellow at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. One of the most things I got to work on while I was there were the rules defining "large market participants" in the debt collection and credit reporting markets. After issuing final rules, the CFPB began to supervise these non-bank entities; marking the first time any federal regulator had the authority to do so. 

It's all the rage these days to beat up on law school as a bad investment and to moan about the economic travails of the legal profession.  There are some reasonable critiques that can be leveled at the shape of legal education and its costs and there are clearly important changes going on in the economics of the legal profession.  But in a NY Times column, James Stewart has tried to connect these imp