BankThink

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Goldman Off the Hook: The Justice Department has decided it will not charge Goldman Sachs (or any of its employees) with financial crimes related to the mortgage crisis. Neither, apparently, will the Securities and Exchange Commission, as Goldman Sachs announced separately the SEC had informed it an investigation into a $1.3 billion subprime mortgage deal had come to an action-less end. The Justice Department said there was not enough evidence to file charges. According to the Journal, the department also said "protecting the integrity of our banking system" remains a "top priority."

Show consumers mobile channels are useful, accessible, secure, familiar and easy to use.

In a recent report the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau provided details about its consumer complaint database. In its first year of operation 43% of the complaints the agency has received have been about mortgages and 34% were about credit cards.

The judge overseeing the Visa/MasterCard swipe fee dispute will not approve the settlement until the second half of 2013. In the interim, this deal must get through numerous hurdles.

Jeffrey Kutler, editor-in-chief of Risk Professional magazine, isn’t surprised that bankers have balked at new regulation. But if there’s still debate about whether or not the Volcker Rule would have prevented JPMorgan's trading losses in the London office “what does that imply about the overall quality of the reform effort?” he asks.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Squarebucks: One small step for Square may turn out to be a giant step for mobile payments. The start-up has struck a mega-partnership with popular coffee chain Starbucks that could very easily revolutionize the payment space. Starting this fall, Starbucks will begin processing all of its debit and credit card transactions in the U.S. using Square technology. The deal also comes with a $25 million investment that places Starbucks CEO Howard Shultz on Square's board.

Almost everyone has a bank. Fewer and fewer have a banker. Here’s why that needs to change.

Bank lobbying groups have been pushing for an extension of the Transaction Account Guarantee program that would continue to make FDIC coverage for all transaction accounts mandatory. "But prior to Dodd-Frank, the original TAG — which regulators created in 2008 to strengthen liquidity — was voluntary and charged participants extra fees to opt in,” writes American Banker’s Joe Adler.

"The kind of problems we're trying to address deal with clarity of the market — know before you owe — right from the very application stage," said Richard Cordray, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director, in a recent interview with the New York Times about the two new mortgage forms the agency proposed in July.

The mortgage-writedown program that the FHFA rejected would have produced little benefit to the housing market. But principal forgiveness, done right, can do a lot of good while minimizing potential harm.