BankThink

Congress recently heard conflicting testimony from three professors and one think tank fellow on a simple, straightforward question: Should there be a guarantee for mortgage securities in the future?

I was at a summit with 300 other community bankers when we were startled by chants of "Make Banks Pay!" Occupy Wall Street and related groups see no solutions coming out of Washington they are attacking bankers as public enemy #1.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Third Verse, Different from the First: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner clarified to lawmakers Thursday that President Obama "does not believe that we get to determine how profitable individual financial institutions are across the country." This followed Obama's remark in a televised interview Monday that banks "don't have some inherent right" to "a certain amount of profit" and his suggestion that the government could stop Bank of America's $5 debit card fee. There was also some fairly tough talk about banks from Geithner himself in public appearances on the intervening days. Yet appearing before the Senate Banking Committee Thursday, the Treasury secretary said the administration's goal is simply "to have a system of oversight and protection where consumers understand what they are being charged." Which, to us, sounds a lot closer to what the acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Raj Date, has been saying. (Geithner also made some reassuring remarks about the safety of the U.S. banking sector, which boosted financial stocks.) In another sign that cooler heads may yet prevail on the matter of bank fees, Washington Post personal finance columnist Michelle Singletary asks her readers to look at the bigger picture: "Just because something was free once doesn't mean it can be offered free forever, right? Don't the banks have a right to charge for the convenience they provide to customers who don't want the burden of carrying around cash or a checkbook? Isn't your time worth money?" But before bankers and their lobbyists start tweeting and emailing her column around, they should be forewarned: Singletary goes on to advise consumers who are repulsed by new debit fees to go back to paying with cash.

A suspected card thief in Ohio was caught when he allegedly used a stolen card with his personal loyalty card to buy gas.

Right now, every customer who uses a debit card could be using a credit card instead. And each one could also share in the increased interchange income.

Regulators' consent orders let mortgage servicers select the firms to review their actions. Allowing the banks to choose their own judge, jury, and jailer presents almost untenable conflicts of interest.

If the industry works seriously with the reasonable critics of its fee practices — the ones who stress disclosure — it can safely ignore the rabble-rousers.

For the vast majority of Americans, the role of the bank is to be there when the customer wants it to be there. Like the water company. Like the electric company.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Steve Jobs Dies: The visionary founder of Apple, who famously said “It's not the consumers' job to know what they want," was 56. As American Banker noted when Jobs stepped down as CEO in August, Apple has had a substantial influence on the financial world. Wired, Fast Company, Financial Times, Wall Street Jornal, New York Times.

Recent breaches at Epsilon and Citibank are evidence that criminals are not just going after financial information anymore; they are increasingly profiting from stealing all kinds of customer data, especially email addresses. By accessing personally identifiable information (PII) such as email addresses or social security numbers, thieves can sell the information on the black market or move forward with highly lucrative phishing or other scams on their own. In fact, according to analyst firm Frost and Sullivan, the global black market for email addresses and national ID numbers is now worth about $5 billion.