BankThink

The largest institutions face feeble economic growth, a moribund housing market, chronically high unemployment, regulatory uncertainty and low rates as far as the eye can see. How will they make money?

To absorb a large warehouse operation would require purchasing the whole bank, not just the warehouse business.

I recently recounted a personal story to a bank's management team that I've shared frequently over the years. I tell it to drive home the point about the importance of eliminating "clutter" that accumulates in our organizations over time. As the group laughed, I assured them that, sadly, this was a true story.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Ratings Rumble: This coming Friday is the deadline for public comments on a regulatory proposal that would forbid the use of credit ratings in determining capital requirements. The FT has a pair of stories in which bankers and other industry representatives complain that this plan would have adverse effects because risk weights on securitized assets, and therefore the amount of capital that must be held against them, would increase. One story emphasizes the potential to delay the housing market recovery; “punitive” capital charges would prevent the private mortgage securitization market from coming back, a bank lobbyist tells the FT. The other story focuses on the perception that the proposal is “anti-American” since banks here would have to hold more capital against mortgage- and asset-backed securities than their overseas counterparts are required to under the international Basel rules. Chimes in one FT reader in the comment thread: “[I] don't disagree with the point about the cost this will impose on US banks but struggle to see how it's anti-Americanism: these are US rules proposed by US regulators.”

Some people are waiting for the next shoe to drop. The first shoe of economic woe is the mortgage mess. That's still not cleaned up and back to normal, whatever the new normal will be. Could the next shoe be the auto insurance business?

This year marks the 50th anniversary of CUES and it's come a long way since those early days. No one is surprised anymore that the "E" in CUES stands for executive; indeed, it's likely the opposite would be true. But that "E" has also come to represent something else: education.

Disaster preparedness is one of the most important elements of effective information systems management for a credit union of any size.

Under a recently-enacted law, Obama is to reduce Iranian oil revenue by punishing banks or other parties that make payments to Iran's central bank. Thus, the interbank payment system becomes a tool of American foreign policy.

In a recent speech at Osawatomie High School in Kansas, President Obama acknowledged that a strong and competitive financial industry is inextricably linked to a healthy economy. This is a message that we believe deserves greater attention by all policymakers, including the presidential aspirants.

The foreclosure reviews mandated by the Fed and the OCC have a better chance of helping current and future borrowers than the state attorneys general settlement, if it ever happens.