Data Sets

American Banker readers share their views on the most pressing banking topics of the week. As excerpted from the Comments sections of AmericanBanker.com articles.

The former chairman and CEO of BB&T uses his new book, "The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure," to lay blame for the financial crisis in 2008. While he does reserve some criticism for bankers, Allison directs most of his ire toward regulators, polticos and a culture of inept policymaking in Washington.

Former Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair was always known for speaking her mind, even when she ran the agency from 2006 to 2011. But in her new book Bull by the Horns," an excerpt of which was featured on Fortune last week, Bair offers a very candid commentary about what she actually thought of the executives running the nation's largest banks during the financial crisis. Following is a small sampling of those views, based on the excerpt, which detailed the fateful meeting in 2008 when the Treasury Department forced the largest banks to accept $25 billion in capital.

These days it seems like everyone is a payments company, whether their primary business is selling coffee or coupons. Wherever they come from, they're challenging the very structure of this industry.

American Banker readers share their views on the most pressing banking topics of the week. As excerpted from the Comments sections of AmericanBanker.com articles.

Brevity is the soul of wit — and sometimes fintech news. With that in mind, Bank Technology News (@BankTechNews) will run a weekly roundup of our favorite financial services-related tweets.

Tim Pawlenty is hardly the first prominent politician to turn into a bank lobbyist. Indeed, there's a long line of them.

Several well-known U.S. banks and credit card companies call themselves "global." During a two-week vacation in Thailand, an American Banker editor put their claims to the test.

Just about every major challenge facing bankers was referenced in American Banker's second Regulatory Symposium, including Basel III, the Volcker Rule, and new CFPB rules. Speakers, including the two top leaders at the FDIC, PNC's Jim Rohr, Rep. Scott Garrett and the Treasury Department's Mary Miller, weighed in with meaty remarks. Following is a list of the top stories from the conference:

Beyond serving as the launch pad for more than 60 fintech products and services, FinovateFall, the two-day event held in Manhattan last week, got fintechies to tweet their hearts out about the presenters, their offerings and the temperature of the conference center. Here are our top 10 favorite tweets from the innovation conference:

American Banker asked readers for their takes on the Federal Reserve's plan to buy an unlimited amount of mortgage securities until jobs rebound and keep rates near zero through mid-2015. Here are some of their reactions.

Apple has — yet again — left payments out when it designed its newest iPhone, despite numerous indications that it explored using Near Field Communication technology to create a mobile wallet. Apple had many good reasons to choose the course it did.

Women Leaders in Action, a leadership development group within U.S. Bancorp's payment services business, shares photos from Kenya, where the group is helping to support students at two schools.

American Banker readers share their views on the most pressing banking topics of the week. As excerpted from the Comments sections of AmericanBanker.com articles.

Executives clashed over whether to add or kill branches, parried M&A rumors, defended big banks and braced for economic slowdown at the Barclays financial services conference in New York.

The Fed may be considering more quantitative easing or keeping interest rates artificially low. That's not what leaders of small banks want to hear.

While the Republicans hardly mentioned Wall Street reform at their convention, it was practically center stage for the Democrats. Everyone from President Obama to President Clinton remarked on it, while Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Barney Frank discussed it in more detail during their addresses to the entire convention. Here are the highlights:

Wall Street hopes M&T's $3.7 billion deal for Hudson City will spark a rush of mergers and acquisitions. These five banks are prime takeover targets.

Discover is pushing aggressively to be at the heart of many mobile-payments initiatives. It's doing a lot that its rivals are not — but there are a few ways it might lose ground.

American Banker readers share their views on the most pressing banking topics of the week. As excerpted from the Comments sections of AmericanBanker.com articles.