Data Rich, Aromatic
Forget about coffee. For John Stumpf, the best part of waking up is deposits in his bank.
The chairman and CEO of Wells Fargo & Co. gets his energy jolt scanning the San Francisco company's daily deposit numbers.
"I get to work at 5:30 in the morning. By the time I'm done reading the paper it's quarter to six, and the first thing I look at is the deposit report. I'm in love with deposits, especially checking accounts. They just get me going," Stumpf said at a conference in New York on Tuesday.
Retrading Places
Eric Dinallo, who might have been prosecuting financial institutions had he won his bid for New York attorney general, will now be representing them. The former state insurance regulator joined the law firm Debevoise & Plimpton LLP this week as a partner, and will counsel financial sector clients on matters including government and internal investigations, litigation, compliance and corporate transactions.
It's not the first time Dinallo has hopscotched between public service and private practice. He was head of regulatory affairs at Morgan Stanley and general counsel of the insurance broker Willis Group before becoming New York's superintendent of insurance. Earlier in his career he was recruited by then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer to serve as chief of the investment protection bureau, where he opened major cases, including one targeting research analyst practices at Wall Street firms.
Dinallo stepped into the national spotlight in 2008, when as an insurance regulator he testified to Congress about the role of credit derivatives in the financial crisis and helped in the restructuring of American International Group Inc. This year he ran for the Democratic nomination for attorney general, but it doesn't appear he had sour grapes over losing the primary to Eric Schneiderman — last month Dinallo was appointed to the transition committee for Schneiderman, who went on to win the general election.
State of the Union
Bankers probably have a good sense already of how financially savvy their customers are, or aren't. Now they can get a snapshot of what their fellow bankers around the country are dealing with.
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Investor Education Foundation has a new website,
Residents of Kentucky and Montana fared worst in at least three of five measures used to test financial capability. Households making smart saving, borrowing and financial planning decisions were most concentrated in New York, New Jersey and New Hampshire.
In announcing the website this week, Finra said the significant disparity from state to state highlights "how many Americans are disadvantaged by their lack of financial capability." But you could tell that just from the national averages culled from the survey: over half of all Americans live paycheck to paycheck, 60% do not have a rainy-day fund to cover financial emergencies, 24% have gone outside the banking system in the past five years for high-cost borrowings such as payday loans and tax-refund advances, and Americans on average can correctly answer just three of five questions about fundamental financial concepts.
No Bumper Sticker
Sure, "too big to fail" has its shortcomings as a basis for economic policymaking, but as a turn of phrase it's fairly succinct. So it's doubtful that Citigroup Inc. Chairman Richard Parsons will see his new name for the concept catch on.
In a live interview this week with CNBC, Parsons said that Citi remains too vital to the financial system to be allowed to disappear — but not because of its size, which has shrunk considerably since the firm's rescue in 2008 thanks to asset sales and wind-downs.
"It's not a question of 'too big to fail,' " Parsons explained. "It's a question of 'too interwoven in the fabric of the global financial life to fail.' "
We'd like to hear Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner try saying that one 10 times fast.
