BankThink

The rule prohibits big foreign banks from allocating capital and liquidity in a manner they deem to be most efficient. This may be an acceptable price to pay if the overall result were enhanced stability, but trapping capital and liquidity in particular jurisdictions is likely to make large banks less resilient in times of crisis.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Is it Time to Tighten Up? That is the question that some Fed officials apparently raised during the central bank's policy meeting last month. Some members showed support for raising interest rates. The Journal notes that, "The fact that the subject came up at all … shows how the central bank's policy debate is slowly and subtly evolving." The New York Times discusses how the Fed's minutes portend a further reduction in stimulus efforts.

Before the Target breach, many merchants were apparently willing to delay or ignore the card networks' deadline for adopting EMV and ready to face the consequences. Now, even merchants who remain unsold on EMV as cost-effective security may view incorporating the technology as unavoidable.

Retail giant Target Corp.'s headache-inducing data breach brings to mind the 1982 Tylenol poisoning crisis—an event that drug maker Johnson & Johnson handled with such aplomb that it restored public confidence in its medicine, altered the way retailers handle product safety and established itself as the gold standard for crisis management.

For his new book, Kevin Roose shadowed new hires at the country’s biggest investment banks. His conclusion: Banks’ problems go well beyond the misdeeds of a few and include doubts about whether they can attract and retain top talent and future leaders.

Sens. Tim Johnson and Mike Crapo run the risk of proposing a second-rate solution for the market to gain mass support for their new legislation.

Tough Rules for Foreign Banks; Mortgage Fiasco Déjà Vu

Risk-weighted regulations doom banks to lend too much, on too easy terms, to "infallible" borrowers –some of whom, as a result, will eventually prove to be very risky.

Before regulators go any further, they should open a public dialogue to make sure they don't do a lot more harm by eliminating the few lenders that remain.

The head of a small Atlanta credit union used a negative situation, the Target data breach's impact on her customers, to score PR points. More big banks should think and act this creatively in crises.