BankThink

Ken Otsuka, senior consultant in risk management, with CUNA Mutual Group discusses how to mitigate risk of DDoS attacks.

Our politics is far more belligerently partisan and dogmatic now than in 2008, and the memory of the public rage over the last bailout is very fresh.

Our analysis is agnostic on whether the costs are proportional to the benefits. But we find the claim that the CARD Act has had no cost to cardholders to be too hopeful based on current data.

In previous articles I spoke of banking and bankers. The following vignettes present some bank customers I encountered during my banking days, including a rabbi, a nun, a hotshot attorney and a philanderer.

"Richard Cordray was reintroduced Thursday as the administration's long-term choice to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but huge questions remain over whether his second nomination for the job is any more likely to be approved than his first," writes American Banker's Joe Adler.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...The Enforcers: Reaction to President Obama's nomination of former prosecutor Mary Jo White as the new head of the Securities and Exchange Commission is a bit of a mixed bag. While headlines acknowledge the pick sends a message to Wall Street — as White is a former top prosecutor and defense lawyer with an impressive (and aggressive) record — their accompanying stories also point out she lacks knowledge of Wall Street arcana. "Regulatory chiefs are often market experts or academics," Dealbook notes. "The gaps in her résumé could complicate Ms. White's agenda in the face of fierce Wall Street lobbying." CNN senior editor Stephen Gandel echoes this sentiment, labeling White "the right woman at the wrong time" and pointing out that, while she might help to change the perception that the SEC was soft on Wall Street crime, she's unlikely to focus on regulating key areas of the market, like high-frequency trading. "What we need now, it seems, is someone who can lay down the rules, still not finalized from Dodd-Frank, that will not just hopefully limit Wall Street malfeasance but its propensity for stupidity as well," Gandel writes. And the Journal points out there's a potential glitch in White's resume: her prior representation of top Wall Street firms, including JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, while serving as a defense attorney with Debevoise & Plimpton LLP. "Obama administration ethics rules would bar Ms. White for two years from working on certain matters involving her former law firm or any clients handled in the prior two years," the article notes. "That might affect enforcement cases in particular."

What the mortgage industry wanted was a clear-cut rule from the CFPB. What it received was 800-plus pages of confusion.

Why do we instinctively cower to power after financial crises and human tragedies? And what can be done about it?

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau garnered a positive reaction after the release of the "qualified mortgage" rule, which governs mortgage underwriting. The industry is optimistic that the still-pending securitization rule may also turn out better than expected.

"A real bank failure has yet to test the Dodd-Frank Act's resolution regime, but an industry group says its realistic mock-up shows the facility can prevent systemic fallout," writes American Banker's Joe Adler.