PayThink

The recent $25 billion settlement by 49 attorneys general and the Obama Administration against the five largest mortgage servicers for deficiencies in their foreclosure practices is emblematic of misdirected energy and bad public policy. Like the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, the settlement is living proof that the judgment of politicians can be clouded by fixes that sound good, but miss the target. State and federal governments' need/desire to punish financial services companies is actually constricting lending and impeding the economic recovery.

Explore the negative impact of the Durbin Amendment on small businesses, including increased fees and reduced banking services, contrary to claims of negligible effects.

The go-go years of financial services growth are over. Today the focus is on capital adequacy, strict underwriting standards and conservative investing. The panicked days of September 2008 that spawned the Dodd-Frank Act mean the days of light-touch regulation also are gone.

Until the mid 1980s, most fraud went undiagnosed or misreported. The debate today seems to be whether the increasing digital landscape ends up increasing or decreasing fraud overall.

A successful payment network would unite banks under a large and trusted external corporation in order to more simply and transparently tackle currently complex financial supply chains.

The Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform bill included a provision creating Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion in all 20 federal agencies that regulate our financial system.

Notes from around the Credit Union Community.

Smart phones have not only changed the way we communicate with one another, they have also transformed the business landscape, connecting members with online resources from the palm of their hand.

Like the nuclear meltdown that devastated Japan a year ago, America's financial crisis resulted in part from collusion between the regulators in the capital and the regulated in the executive suites. Unlike the Japanese, we didn't learn from our calamity.

Many financial product innovations sound brilliant, but are prone to blow up after 5 or 15 years of increasing emulation and bloat, as discipline declines. Then, after the horses are long gone, Washington thinks about painting the barn. Some of that happened with inventive mortgages and their securitization, with collateral default swaps, with overinvestment in commercial real estate, and — some would allege — with money market funds.