BankThink

Six months ago, Glass-Steagall, the Depression-era law that dictated strict separation between commercial and investment banks, was out of fashion, with only commentators on the far left advocating for its revival. But how quickly tides of favor can turn: Now it’s becoming mainstream.

They say true compromise is achieved when nobody’s happy. In the case of financial regulatory reform, that doesn’t mean that nobody’s laughing.

There’s a detail in the Seattle Times’ exhaustive series on Washington Mutual’s mortgage lending practices that’s too darkly funny to go unnoticed. The four stories focus on the Seattle thrift’s journey down the dark path of low-documentation lending and risky products, such as adjustable-rate mortgages. At one point, WaMu even made a low-doc loan to O.J. Simpson. Yes, that O.J. Simpson.

I would suspect most credit union CEOs and senior managers feel there's no need to enroll in college again; if anything, they should be teaching a new generation about all the credits they have compiled in the School of Hard Knocks this year.

The three letters that appeared on page 10 of your Oct. 12 edition exhibit three completely different levels of understanding of the issue of alternative capital for credit unions.

The problem with document management for any system manager is, at a minimum, threefold: Ensuring that the correct data is retained; that it remains accessible without user productivity being affected; and that storage-management costs are kept under control.

Like the fall weather and the Philadelphia Phillies, regulatory restructuring isn’t going away anytime soon. The House Financial Services Committee is entering its third week of markups for new financial legislation and the Treasury Department is due to release a bill on new segments of the reform effort. Also watch for guidance from regulators on how banks can modify commercial real estate loans.

It’s pretty powerful: The former chairman of Citigroup begins his letter to the editor of the New York Times by pointing out that he “has experienced both the pre- and post-Glass-Steagall world.” Then he comes out in favor of breaking up big, complex banks.

It’s not every day the payments industry is compared to the drug trade. But apparently it offers equal opportunity for motivated criminals.

In the industry’s race to integrate major banking company acquisitions, Wells Fargo & Co. likes being the tortoise rather than the hare.