BankThink

If banks can track borrowers' interest rates and terms, how hard can it be for them to track which borrowers are serving in the military?

Receiving Wide Coverage ...To Downgrade or Not to Downgrade… At a hearing on Capitol Hill the president of Standard & Poor's, Deven Sharma said that some newspapers have misreported his company's position on the U.S. debt crisis as having set a $4 trillion deficit reduction target in order for the country to preserve its triple-A credit rating. He said that some of the plans being considered that would reduce the U.S deficit by less than $4 trillion, actually would allow the United States to preserve its rating, the Post reported. The Journal, however, said Sharma said the rating agency was taking a wait-and-see attitude. The Times' take? The U.S. is unlikely to default on its debt but the credit rating depends on cutting spending and reducing the deficit. Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post

Hacking suspects may blame their arrests on having picked the wrong target. The FBI used data collected by PayPal to choose its suspects.

Wall Street JournalSquabbling over who should pay less has delayed a settlement between banks and 50 state attorneys general over the mortgage foreclosure mess, sources told the Journal. "The latest disagreement among banks is a contrast to the largely unified public stance taken by financial firms as they work to put the foreclosure woes behind them," the paper said.

In attempting to prevent abuses of the interchange cap exemption for reloadable prepaid cards, the Fed may have inadvertently scuttled an opportunity for banks to serve low-balance account holders.

Suspected members of the hacker group Anonymous say they are surprised at the backlash.

The batteries in Apple's laptops can be hijacked to house malicious programs that can steal data, according to new research.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...A Split Decision: Deutsche Bank said Anshu Jain, head of its investment bank, and Jürgen Fitschen, the German bank's head of regional management, will become co-CEOs of the bank next year when Josef Ackermann retires. One holdup, according to the Times, had been that Jain, a native of India who is not fluent in German, is regarded as not ready to assume the statesmanlike duties required of Deutsche Bank's chief. The Journal said the decision to have co-CEOs is "a compromise solution that could complicate decision-making at the top." The Post said the bank's stock prices rose after the announcement. Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Two Tales of A Nation: The deal on debt relief for Greece will remove uncertainty, helping prevent a loss of confidence in banks, said Charles Dallara, the managing director of the Institute of International Finance, the Times reported. Dallara was a negotiator for the deal. The Post reported that Moody's cut Greek debt three notches to Ca and warned that the nation will likely default before stabilizing. Wall Street Journal, Washington Post

Effective "Management by Walking Around" efforts have the capacity to make any organization more efficient and more human.