BankThink

The social network just wants to know everything about the consumer. Payments happen to be the best way for people to show they really "like" a product.

Most shareholders are not activists. Relatively few voice displeasure over executive pay, or other issues such as reappointment of ineffective audit firms. About the only thing they do wake up for is to complain about poor dividends.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Throw a TARP Over Them: The U.S. Treasury will soon have to stop doing premature victory laps and start tallying the red ink for its Troubled Asset Relief Program. That's the politically inconvenient conclusion Christy Romero draws in a report scheduled for release Wednesday. The newly installed Tarp special inspector general, Romero declares that 351 small banks, with some $15 billion Tarp loans still outstanding, face a "significant challenge" in raising new funds to repay the government, the Wall Street Journal writes. The Small Business Lending Program, in particular, culled a large number of the healthier banks from Tarp, but left stragglers with less capital, missed dividend payments and in many cases regulatory enforcement actions to contend with, American Banker notes. Romero's comments are part of her first quarterly report to Congress since becoming special inspector general in March and are part of her push to get government and regulators to help banks raise funds to repay their Tarp loans. Just how much the Tarp program will cost taxpayers—if anything—is a hot political topic. The Congressional Budget Office in December forecast a lifetime cost of $34 billion, noting that to date Treasury had spent $414 billion on Tarp and taken in $330 billion in dividends and repayments. Unwilling to let such facts get in the way of a good story, Treasury has been bragging about Tarp's financial success ahead of November's elections and claiming the government will "at least break even on its financial stability programs and may realize a positive return," the Journal notes. Romero takes issue with such claims, stating that taxpayers are still owed $118 billion, a figure she says includes investments in AIG, General Motors (GM), Ally Financial and other smaller programs under the Tarp umbrella, in addition to the outstanding loans to smaller banks. "It is a widely held misconception that Tarp will make a profit. The most recent cost estimate for Tarp is a loss of $60 billion," the report says, as quoted by TheStreet.com. Romero also counted $4.2 billion that Treasury had written off and realized losses of $9.8 billion "that taxpayers will never get back." Wall Street Journal, The Street, American Banker

One of the most important regulatory decisions currently facing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is how to define the characteristics of a "qualified mortgage." This decision will have an enormous impact on the mortgage markets, and will ultimately determine the types of mortgages generally available in the United States, and the minimum qualifications for those seeking to obtain a home loan.

Wal-Mart stands accused of a major bribery scheme that cuts to the core of the way this international giant does business in Mexico – and demonstrates how little U.S. regulators and investors know.

Strategic defaulters have lost the incentive to pay. Something should be done to replace that incentive, not simply reduce debt.

Senka Huskic is mad, very mad and wants you to share that anger. Think a "Network" kind of anger, a Howard Beale kind of anger, a genuine bona fide "I'm mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore" kind of anger.

Is it fair to give a 30% haircut to borrowers who put zero down, and not to their neighbors who put 30% down? Or to distribute taxpayer funds to five states with half the country's negative equity?

Receiving Wide Coverage ...The Bank Shareholder Revolt: It’s gone global. A group of activist investors is urging fellow shareholders of Deutsche Bank to vote against a resolution at the annual meeting approving the performance of the company’s “supervisory board.” (That’s the board made up exclusively of nonexecutive directors; Deutsche Bank has a separate “management board.” Everything’s a little bit different in Europe.) “The investor group is particularly angry that Europe’s largest bank by assets did not give shareholders the opportunity to vote on its remuneration report for last year,” especially since the year before a full 42% of shareholders had rejected the pay structure, the FT reports. The paper also notes that on Friday, Barclays will face a potential shareholder rebuke for the pay package of CEO Bob Diamond. In the big picture, writes the FT’s banking editor, Patrick Jenkins, “Investors feel empowered like never before.” Which he considers a welcome development, with a caveat: banks should resist shareholder calls for dividend hikes, even when regulators allow them, since the institutions must build thicker capital buffers to steel their balance sheets against future crises. Jenkins suggests that investors in the big diversified global banks broaden their protests to target investment bankers’ bonus pools along with CEO compensation packages, since those bonus pools are “the only feasible place” to claw back money to return to owners. In the Journal, columnist Francesco Guerrera faults Citigroup’s board, led by departing chairman Richard Parsons, for its handling of shareholder concerns about pay — concerns that were voiced loud and clear by last week’s shellacking in the say-on-pay vote at the annual meeting. Also, if you haven’t already, check out American Banker’s handy guide to the ongoing proxy season. Click here, then open the top related graphic on the left side of the page, and you’ll get a bird’s-eye view of shareholder say-on-pay votes so far, and for companies with upcoming meetings the dates, recommendations from proxy advisory firms, last year's ballot results and other data. Finally, Wells Fargo's annual meeting is today, and our colleague Victoria Finkle reports that the company faces a different kind of protest, this one over its lending and foreclosure practices (and the demonstrators won't just be picketing outside the building — Occupy-type activists have acquired shares so they can voice their concerns inside).

Women expect you to walk the talk. If you say, "we care about and believe in women," yet all of your management is men, then, Houston, you have a problem.