BankThink

Risk management expert Clifford Rossi looks at two recently released documents on the FHA, which he says together "bear ominous warnings about a portfolio in excess of $1 trillion."

Canada is replacing its paper $100 bills with plastic ones to deter counterfeiting.

This is the time of year when bank boards of directors and management begin the strategic planning process for the following year. There will be few years in the careers of any of us that will provide as many seemingly one-time events as will this coming year, 2012.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Occupying Hearts and Minds: The papers took a stab at weighing the future of the Occupy Wall Street protests in the daylight of a "cleared and power washed" Zuccotti Park. The Times said "questions endure about whether…the movement might lose momentum or drift into irrelevancy" without its central piece of street theater. But some organizers "acknowledged that the crackdowns by the authorities in New York and other cities might ultimately benefit the movement, which may have become too fixated on retaining the territorial footholds." Wall Street Journal, New York Times

It might not be well-reasoned; it might not always be civil; and it might not be fair. But the Occupy Wall Street movement, with its anti-finance bias, is with us and it is real. And unless the economy improves, or some other dramatic event occurs that at the moment seems remote, the reality is that banks are stuck for now in a reputational backwater.

The U.S. Treasury is looking beyond the insured banking system in an effort to improve the delivery of viable credit alternatives to consumers.

Another bank finds itself facing a lawsuit over a takeover of a business customer's account.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Occupy Somewhere Else (for a While): Police in New York cleared Zuccotti Park, the site of the Occupy Wall Street protests, in a surprise raid Tuesday morning. The demonstrators were told the move was temporary and they could return later, but if and when they do the structures they erected to keep warm (illegal fire hazards, according to authorities) will be gone. The Post quotes a sanitation worker as saying, “We’re gonna disinfect the hell out of this place.” (Oh, that’s the New York Post, if you were wondering.) The tabloid has an accompanying editorial entitled “Time’s Up, Children.” Hmm, maybe we’re reading too much into the nuanced writing, but we’re beginning to think maybe the Post doesn’t hold the protestors in high regard? We went to the Village Voice site for a different perspective and found some news we might use (“Occupy Wall Street Vows to Shut Down Subways” – aw jeez, please don’t) and a Tweet that demonstrates 140 characters can convey a lot (“Me: 'I'm press!' Lady cop: 'Not tonight.'”) OK, we’d better get back to banking now… Wall Street Journal, New York Times, New York Post, Daily News (New York), Financial Times

The political jousting over the structure and leadership of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau continues, but the real work of the agency and its professionals has begun. That work will ultimately determine, among other things, whether the CFPB will be a rules-based or enforcement-based agency.

There's no "social mandate from heaven to make automobiles affordable for all," says columnist Andrew Kahr. Yet subprime auto has come out of the crisis unscathed. Unlike mortgage lenders, auto financiers didn't fall prey to the assumption that prices would inexorably rise.