PayThink

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.

IMGCAP(1)]

Many private-equity firms hoped to capitalize on the financial crisis through two waves of bank investments. The first, in 2007-8, focused on large investments in major banks. These disappointing investments were too early as industry conditions worsened dragging down these investments.

Suddenly, it seems like almost everyone is offering a mobile wallet. Major issuers, telco consortiums, search engines and other third-party intermediaries are clamoring for attention.

Most reasonably intelligent readers are finally willing to admit the financial crisis was neither an unpredictable, uncontrollable, once in a blue-moon "black swan" event nor the result of a conspiracy by shadow bankers who've implemented a new world order while flying from Manhattan to Islip in black helicopters.

There are several factors that Bank of America's managers must have known when they recently started testing a new fee schedule for consumers.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency acting director, Edward DeMarco, recently sent to Congress a strategic plan for the next phase of conservatorships of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. A new structure for housing finance requires congressional action, yet neither Congress nor the administration has come up with an acceptable plan in the three years since Fannie and Freddie were placed into conservatorship. It's far from clear that the DeMarco plan will get the job done.

An ongoing drama is unfolding: a David versus Goliath tale of sorts that pits a Riverside, Calif., family fighting to stay in their home against the weight of that elephant, otherwise known as "Freddie."

They won’t go cold turkey. Surprisingly, the more purchases consumers pay for with debit, the more cash they withdraw. Use ATM screens to get the word out about debit’s benefits.

On Feb. 29 one of the members of the Federal Open Markets Committee, Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher, called for the breakup of the top five U.S. Banks.