Viewpoints: National/Global
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2010
Viewpoint: Let's Not Try to Manage Failure
American Banker | Mar 18 Regulators cannot be successful in regulating FIs so they don't fail. The best that can be done is to set up living wills or to not allow SGFIs to exist.
Viewpoint: What If Greece Leaves EMU
American Banker | Feb 24 While private institutions made decisions to extend credit and enter into transactions to support Greece's financial strategy, the consequences of those decisions are now public problems.
Viewpoint: Volcker Rule Not Only Potent Reform
American Banker | Feb 23 If some version of the current House reform bill is enacted with the Volcker Rule, financial institutions that de-bank to avoid the rule's restrictions could be subject to similar restrictions.
Viewpoint: Volcker Rule Has Many Flaws
American Banker | Feb 23 Legislating against unknowable future events by artificially restricting legitimate financial activities invites anticompetitive behavior and unintended consequences.
Feedback: Banks' CRE Losses Overstated
American Banker | Feb 17 [Re "CRE Shackles Smaller Banks, But the Big Ones Escape," Feb. 12] The top 50 banks' exposure to the commercial real estate asset class is around $700B in total and accounts for the vast majority of outstandings.
Viewpoint: Align Pay for All Risk-Takers
American Banker | Feb 17 While the idea has some virtue in relation to the CEOs of too-big-to-fail banks and investment bankers, it has been oversold as a cure for banking compensation more generally.
Viewpoint: Managing Risk Key to Success with a Failure
American Banker | Feb 16 With many banks considering acquiring failed banks from the FDIC its a high-stakes race where players need a playbook as detailed and decisive as their traditional M&A playbooks.
Viewpoint: Too Big and Too Much Trouble
American Banker | Feb 11 The blame game for the crisis offers no concrete benefit, no solution that will prove to be practical in avoiding a similar catastrophe. It is time for a fix and that means reform.
Viewpoint: Good Bank, Bad Bank, Good Deal
American Banker | Feb 9 "Good bank/bad bank" recapitalizations like the transaction devised to rid Mellon Bank of problem loans could mean the difference between Main Street economic growth and a decade of stagnation.
Feedback: Incentive-Pay Article Ignored a Key Fallacy
American Banker | Feb 4 I found Mark Olson's Viewpoint ["Expect Scrutiny of Incentive Pay," Jan. 27] troubling because he seems oblivious of the fallacy of composition. What might work for one bank does not work for all banks should asset values decline quickly throughout the world.
Column: Keep It Simple, Steady on Front Line
American Banker | Feb 4 When was the last time you were greeted promptly with a smile, actively listened to, and thanked by name? A pretty short list and not very complicated. Yet most companies would fail that test.
Viewpoint: Toughen Boards Instead of Regulations
American Banker | Feb 3 It was bank directors who failed to appreciate the risks inherent in managements' unsustainable growth strategies based on high-risk credits, and not risky activities that caused the crisis.
Feedback: Leaders, Learning Key to Managing Risk
American Banker | Feb 2 In a recently published Viewpoints article ["Risk Manager Standards Sorely Lacking," Jan. 13], Keith W. Waitt is partially correct in stating that there is no recognized industry qualification to determine risk management competency, but he fails to place that comment in context.
Feedback: Dimon Was Right, You Need More than Credit Scores
American Banker | Jan 28 In his testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon cited an over-reliance on consumer credit scores as a contributing factor to last year's financial meltdown. ["Illumination is Lacking at Crisis Inquiry Hearing," Jan. 14]
Viewpoint: Expect Scrutiny of Incentive Pay
American Banker | Jan 27 Bank board members may recall the regulatory scrutiny that accompanied the awarding of bank stock options, but the issue then was consistency with GAAP rather than safety.
Viewpoint: Overdraft Opt-In Made Easy
American Banker | Jan 22 The goal is developing a Regulation E solution that meets the needs of consumers and the marketplace and retains as much or more of your revenue as possible. It can be done.
Letter to the Editor: The Real Chief Risk Officer
American Banker | Jan 13
To the Editor:
Titles aside, when we begin to recognize that the defacto chief executive officer and the chief risk officer are, and ought to be, one and the same with concomitant authorities, then we will show that we "get it" and will be best positioned to identify desired standards.
Viewpoint: Risk Manager Standards Sorely Lacking
American Banker | Jan 13 There is no minimum standard that we can look to in risk management circles that would give us comfort over a person's competency or skill.
Letter to the Editor: A Matter of Personal Responsibility
American Banker | Jan 12
To the Editor:
I am not a Huffington fan. I am an American. We have watched carefully while Obama has tried to get us out of the hole we are in. We can see that he can't do it for us. We all need to act, to take personal responsibility.
2009
Letter to the Editor: Great Hopes in Moynihan
American Banker | Dec 30
To the Editor:
As a former colleague I wanted to comment on the recent appointment of Brian T. Moynihan as Bank of America's next CEO.
Viewpoint: Turn Overdraft Rule Changes into a Positive
American Banker | Dec 30 By eliciting opt-in participation and by developing new products to help overdrafters, banks can maintain coverage with at least a third of the overdraft-prone customer pool.
Viewpoint: Payday Lending's Steep Cost Isn't Just in Fees
American Banker | Dec 16 Payday lending and violent crime are related. The availability of relatively large amounts of cash in distressed neighborhoods at readily identifiable locations accounts for this connection.
Viewpoint: Ways to Meet Challenge in Commercial Deposits
American Banker | Dec 11 Commercial deposit gathering will become a high-stakes exercise next year. Targeting, products, pricing and customer outreach are among the success factors in the quest for deposits.
Viewpoint: In Poor Lands, a Wealth of Models
American Banker | Dec 4 The developing world has further to go than the U.S. to raise rates of financial inclusion and operates in a context of more extreme poverty. Yet developing countries are succeeding.
Viewpoint: Communicate with Regulators to Build Trust
American Banker | Nov 13 In developing and maintaining a cooperative relationship with your regulators, there is one simple rule: A bank must establish trust.
Letter to the Editor: Put Preparedness Ahead of Profitability
American Banker | Nov 11
To the Editor:
The three-part series on the topic of what needs to be done with large banks makes a number of important points. That "too big to fail" is really a euphemism for "too big to manage" is spot on.
Viewpoint: Third Time's the Charm for Toxic Asset Solution
American Banker | Nov 6 Only by adopting an approach that does not fatally impair capital, provide a taxpayer-supported windfall or burden the already strained federal budget can we prevent another false start.
Viewpoint: Provide Value to Replace Overdraft-Fee Income
American Banker | Oct 30 With new value-rich products, including incentive checking and rewards programs, banks can successfully and quickly reinvent their revenue streams and expand revenue and market share.
Viewpoint: Bank Leadership Needs Detailed Review
American Banker | Oct 23 Instead of a top-down prescription for the global financial malaise, a more practical approach may be to downstream and focus reforms and accountability at the firm level.
Viewpoint: Times Have Changed; CEOs Must Do Same
American Banker | Oct 16 Since most companies are through the survival phase of the economic crisis, CEOs and senior managers would be wise to take advantage of the opportunity to reposition their businesses.
Viewpoint: High Potential in the Low-Income Sector
American Banker | Oct 14 Only simple products can be delivered at affordable prices to low-income people. At the same time, simplified products must incorporate risk reduction in creative ways.
Viewpoint: Martin on Retailing: Jobs Are Temporary; Failure Can Be, Too
American Banker | Oct 2 In our current business environment, it is understandable that many of our teams are having a bit harder time keeping a positive outlook. Remind them that setbacks and frustrations are normal.
Viewpoint: Bank of America Deserves Gratitude, Not Scorn
American Banker | Sep 30 Lewis and McColl built a great company. It pains me to see Ken Lewis raked over the coals for political purposes when he deserves gratitude for resolving two major problems he did not create.
Viewpoint: Build on Direct Deposit Partnerships
American Banker | Sep 25 Receiving income by direct deposit has several benefits and, more importantly, it enables more people to use the types of financial services that improve financial prosperity.
Viewpoint: Crisis Rooted in Data Issues
American Banker | Sep 23 The problem refers to the inability of regulators to observe the positions and trades of financial institutions and to aggregate such data for understanding exposures.
Viewpoint: A Fond Farewell to Seidman
American Banker | Sep 18 Bill Seidman's family and the leadership of the fine university he founded, held a memorial service celebrating the life and accomplishments of this remarkable renaissance man.
Viewpoint: Preparation Can Ease a Director Bankruptcy
American Banker | Sep 11 It is crucial that the bank get an early warning so that it can take reasonable steps to protect itself from the reputational and other risks that may arise from a public proceeding.
Viewpoint: New Challenges, But New Opportunities Too
American Banker | Sep 9 Banks must be open to new levels of innovation that will enable them to surpass customer expectations, grow strategically and manage risks, while reducing costs and complying with regulations.
Viewpoint: Crisis Response Lessons From the Past Decades
American Banker | Sep 4 We are not going back to Glass-Steagall or limited interstate branching. Clearly some regulatory consolidation is in order, and the proposed merger of the OTS into the OCC is a good first step.
Stress Test Profile: BB&T Corp.
American Banker | Aug 21 BB&T will be a bellwether of the performance of the U.S. banking sector and for when the worst is over for the credit markets generally.
