BankThink

What's easy to forget a decade later is that Sept. 11 wasn't so much a day as an era; the panic and nervousness and uncertainty brought about by the terrorist attacks didn't just fade away as October 2011 rolled around. In the months following 9/11, I was reminded of how the concept of "standard operating procedures" became anything but in the final months of that year.

Today, our business model may still require our members to cooperate, but credit unions (and their boards and executives) do very little in the way or cooperating, especially when it comes to "educating" the public about credit union "best practices" in personal financial behavior.

I worry about the future of a nation that refuses to acknowledge the true causes of the crisis, justifying actions by filing lawsuits against other wrongdoers. In reality, every check of the system failed to restrain the excess and greed or to correct the delusional optimism.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Anxious MF: MF Global, the troubled brokerage run by former Senator and Goldman Sachs chief Jon Corzine, was seeking to find a buyer before the markets opened Monday and was reportedly close to a deal for filing Chapter 11 and selling its assets to Interactive Brokers, based in Greenwich, Conn. J. Christopher Flowers earlier was said to be a possible suitor, but the Times reported Interactive was the last bidder standing. A post on the Journal's "DealJournal" blog gives a just-the-facts-ma'am rundown of what any buyer would be getting.

Photos of a Halloween office party at a foreclosure law firm, obtained by the Times' Joe Nocera, are nearly as appalling as the Abu Ghraib torture pics.

Bank of America's recent announcement that it plans on charging most of its customers a $5 monthly fee to make debit card purchases has touched off a firestorm of protest across the country. And for good reason. For most Americans, who have already paid dearly for the economic mess touched off by risky bank practices, this latest fee just adds insult to injury.

In some countries people are executed for "fighting against God." But in the U.S. the penalty for fighting against the government is less harsh. The market often exacts the appropriate penalty—for instance, in the case of Durbin.

On Oct. 25 MetLife announced that the Federal Reserve had denied its request for approval of its capital distribution plan that included a dividend increase and resumption of stock repurchases. Likely it is a reflection of a prudent regulator. Rather than make an isolated determination on a single company, the Fed probably prefers to await results from its planned 2012 cross-institution analysis of the largest U.S. bank holding companies. MetLife's participation in that analysis underscores its systemic importance.

Fake antivirus scams, which trick people into thinking they need to hand over their credit card info to update their antivirus, seem to be going away.

Jon Corzine's old ways got his firm into to trouble. Now he’s hoping old ties will bail it out.