BankThink

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Sons and Daughters: Documents, including spreadsheets and emails, shine some light on how hiring the children of prominent businesspeople in China may have helped JPMorgan Chase land business with state-controlled companies. For example, in one email a senior JPM banker in Hong Kong writes, "You all know I have always been a big believer of the Sons and Daughters program — it almost has a linear relationship" with winning assignments. JPMorgan handed the documents over to U.S. authorities, who have been investigating the bank for possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. There's an interesting contrast between the papers' opening paragraphs. The Times (which made this the lead story — front page, upper-right hand — on Sunday): "Federal authorities have obtained confidential documents…" The Journal (page C3 Monday): "A J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. investigation of its overseas hiring has found…"

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

According to the Chinese calendar, 2014 is the Year of the Horse. The horse is considered strong and naturally lucky when it comes to money resources.

We all know that credit union branches are being changed by member use of banking technology.

Are you innovative? Of course you are. The only thing that would be innovative anymore would be finding someone who doesn't believe they are an innovator, or any CU that doesn't plan to be an innovator in 2014.

These types of schemes rarely pay off in the end, and they certainly never represent an efficient use of funding. Banks would, therefore, be well-advised to make some immediate price-structure changes.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray debunked myths on Thursday about the agency's new mortgage rule.

Reduced lending, fewer leaders in times of crisis and less innovation – that’s what we’d have if only the biggest banks were allowed to survive.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Waiting for Volcker: News on the contents of the Volcker Rule continues to trickle in ahead of next week's vote on the long-awaited Dodd-Frank provision. The Journal reports that the rule will require bank executives to guarantee their firms are in compliance with the regulation, which, incidentally, marks another requirement banks lobbied against that wound up in regulators' final proposal. Meanwhile, an unnamed senior Treasury official tells the FT the rule will "be quite short, leaving room for regulators' discretion."

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said Thursday that regulators will release a strict version of Dodd-Frank's Volcker Rule that would ban proprietary trading and investment in hedge and equity funds by banks.