BankThink

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Weill's Bombshell: "I am suggesting that [large, diversified financial companies] be broken up so that the taxpayer will never be at risk, the depositors won't be at risk." That is what Sandy Weill, the man who assembled the quintessential Frankenbank, said on CNBC Wednesday morning, causing finance and media professionals around the world to gasp, spit out their coffee, and/or utter things like "whoa" or "holy mackerel" or other, unprintable expressions. And yes, Weill really did follow up with the classic craven passive-verb construction "Mistakes were made." It's tempting to dwell on the many inevitable snarky reactions ("Well done Sandy — 'C' trades at 10 cents on your 1998 merger dollar," PIMCO's Bill Gross tweeted). But let's stick to the important matter: What's the likely fallout from the consummate empire-builder's coming-to-Glass-Steagall moment? According to the Journal's "Heard on the Street" column, it's unlikely to spark legislative changes anytime soon, but it could well embolden shareholders of the megabanks — who've suffered as the equity market has discounted the stocks relative to smaller institutions — to press for change. Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times, Marketplace, FT Alphaville, Dealbreaker, Naked Capitalism

Richard Cordray, director of the CFPB, faced Republicans in Congress on Tuesday night as part of a House subcommittee on financial services oversight hearing.

A BankThink post on the snail’s pace of payments sparks a discussion of how red tape stops financial institutions from leveraging social media. Have banks hit a social media stalemate?

"If I could push a button and eliminate Dodd-Frank would I do it? No, I would not," says Goldman Sach’s Lloyd Blankfein.

Sandy Weill's call to break up big banks invoked the Main Street bankers who have blasted Wall Street fat cats like him for years. What next for him — a director post at a small bank in Peoria?

Financial markets remain highly complex webs subject to major systemic shocks we are ill-equipped to identify before our financial system melts down.

Breaking News This Morning ...Sandy Weill Calls for Return of Glass-Steagall: No, you are not dreaming, and this is not a parody from The Onion. This is real. In a CNBC interview this morning, the architect of Citigroup says, “What we should probably do is go and split up investment banking from banking, have banks be deposit takers, have banks make commercial loans and real estate loans, have banks do something that’s not going to risk the taxpayer dollars, that’s not too big to fail.” Now he tells us.

A regulatory settlement or a Senate hearing can remove a particular cloud enveloping an institution, but create deeper doubts than the ones it removes.

Last week's enforcement order against Capital One "signaled the CFPB is shooting for higher settlement amounts, is more interested in providing a detailed account of what went wrong, and wants to specify exactly what institutions should do in similar situations," writes American Banker's Kevin Wack.

We know banks large and small are concerned about the compliance costs and other implications of Dodd-Frank. How about credit unions?