BankThink

Banks can retain their best and brightest staff by offering career advancement opportunities, competitive base salaries, adequate training and attentive performance management.

Romney may have worded it awkwardly, but he has never expressed a more pro-female sentiment than when he talked about those "binders full of women." Oftentimes, you need to deliver the resumes of female candidates directly to the decision makers in order to promote gender equity.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Big Bank CEOs vs. the Fiscal Cliff: Big bank CEOs are intensifying their efforts to get Congress to deal with the looming fiscal cliff, convening to discuss the issue over lunch at JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon's house and releasing a letter intended to sway legislators toward a budget compromise. "We write today to urge you to work together to reach a bipartisan agreement to avoid the approaching 'fiscal cliff,' and take concrete steps to restore the United States' long-term fiscal footing," says the letter, which was signed by Dimon, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat and several others. But many news outlets have been quick to criticize the big bankers' oh-so-noble efforts. A Bloomberg article calls the letter "worthless" since Congress isn't wrangling over whether to address the deficit — like big bankers, legislators generally agree that's a good idea — but rather on how exactly to do so. "Instead of these wise men giving members of Congress permission to buck their own parties, the CEOs fail to explain what such a bipartisan agreement should look like," staff writer Brendan Greenley writes. Meanwhile, Slate blogger Matthew Yglesias quickly points out the letter itself presents a contradiction, since the fiscal cliff is a policy to reduce "the ratio of federal debt to GDP over the medium term," and suggests what big bankers really fear is not another recession, but rather an expiration of the Bush tax cuts that would come with going over the cliff. "It's easy to see why you'd care a lot about that if you happened to be a multi-millionaire bank CEO, but it has basically nothing to do with the 2013 growth outlook," Yglesias writes. "If you care about inequality, jumping off the cliff offers by far the best chance for addressing it."

The slew of mortgage rules coming down the pike tops the list for mortgage lender angst. And it's not just lenders who are concerned. Fair lending advocates worry about tighter standards leading to a squeeze on credit.

The simmering controversy over American Express' Bluebird card typifies a classic debate: When do regulations that ostensibly protect the public from shady operators really just protect incumbent businesses from competition?

Legal violations in student loan servicing may be worse than those in mortgage servicing for borrowers in the militar, says the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Defense Department. So the two are joining forces to help stop it.

There needs to be stronger incentive for bankers to behave, far-reaching cultural changes spurred by directors and a unilateral commitment to stamp out money-laundering schemes.

It seems a shame we limit these debates to politics, doesn't it? What if credit unions and their trade groups hired their presidents in the same way?

The crisis of 2007-2008 brought profound changes to the financial services industry as well as to the American consumer's habits, changing the CFO's role.

Amex's Bluebird card account, exempt from Durbin and assertedly from bank regulation, is likely to generate high interchange. Consumers, banks and Amex won't pay for these checking accounts. Merchants (excepting Walmart) will.