Receiving Wide Coverage ...
It Wasn't Me: Dorian S. Nakamoto, the man who was hounded by the media after Newsweek claimed he was the "Satoshi Nakamoto" who invented Bitcoin, has categorically denied any involvement with the cryptocurrency. Through his lawyer (Financial Times, TechCrunch). For less sensational but much more interesting developments in the Bitcoin world, read about the new wallet-and-vault services Xapo (New York Times, PaymentsSource) and CryptoCorp (Bitcoin Magazine) and the programmable "meta-coin" Ethereum (The Economist).
Wall Street Journal
"Adjustable-Rate Mortgages Make a Comeback" For highly creditworthy, well-heeled jumbo borrowers, mind you.
Share buybacks aren't all they're cracked up to be, "Heard on the Street" warns megabank shareholders ahead of the upcoming release of the Fed's annual stress test results and capital plan decisions.
"Consumer Financial Cover-Up" As you can guess from the headline, this is a Journal editorial inveighing against the CFPB, specifically the opacity of the agency's methods for determining disparate impact in auto lending.
Financial Times
"Barclays, Citigroup and Royal Bank of Scotland have frozen bonuses across swaths of their foreign exchange trading teams pending internal investigations into possible manipulation of key currency benchmarks. The cash and share bonus suspensions are targeted on the wider team rather than just the traders under investigation." Apparently the rationale for keeping the whole class in detention is that "it would be unfair to single out those already on leave, given that others could still be implicated as well."
New York Times
Muckraking columnist Gretchen Morgenson has a field day with the recent inspector general's report that found mortgage fraud cases to be a "low priority" for Eric Holder's Justice Department.
"Consumers Not Powerless in the Face of Credit Card Fraud" This personal finance column advises cardholders to sign up for fraud alerts and to "pester" their issues to provide protective technology like "on/off switches" and chip-and-PIN if they don't already.
"California Sued Over Diversion of Money From National Mortgage Settlement" The $369 million at issue "had been earmarked to help troubled borrowers but was used instead to pay down the state's debt."
