PayThink

One of the biggest changes in modern regulation and supervision has been the stress test and capital conservation standards developed by the Federal Reserve and required in regulation by the Dodd-Frank Act.

Richard Cordray is right to crack down on illegal practices in payday lending. It is essential that his agency also ensure consumers continue to have online access to emergency credit products.

Earlier this month, Citi announced the expansion of its popular "thankyou" program with a new Facebook app. If the number of likes (185,000 and counting) on Citi's page is any indication, it appears Citi has found a compelling way to engage its youngest and most fickle customers in the place they spend most of their digital time.

I naively thought that Suze Orman's new prepaid offering, the Approved Card, would help turn the tide of negativity. Instead, it has had the opposite effect, creating a seemingly endless echo chamber about the evils of prepaid.

Alex Pollock's "Let's Put Checks and Balances on CFPB" is spot on describing the enormous danger of a politically unchecked CFPB lording over consumer financial services, and what animates its champions. They believe the financial services industry is rapacious and untrustworthy, a great many of their countrymen are not fully competent to make their own ("the right") choices selecting consumer financial products, and unconstrained regulatory mandarins produce better outcomes than lightly regulated markets.

A poster boy for the digital currency now says credit cards are “way simpler.” His fictional counterpart in the "Bitcoin for Dummies" episode of "The Good Wife" is similarly disillusioned.

"Rich" Cordray (as his sidekick Raj Date calls him) is being unfairly stigmatized by press references to him as "5-time Jeopardy winner." As if that were his greatest qualification!

My guess is that Shaun Donovan and Tim Geithner are burning the midnight oil and firing up the afterburners in attempts to wrap this agreement up by Tuesday’s State of the Union address.

Many credit unions have used an RFP in selecting a provider of executive benefits, a complex business that requires specific and detailed knowledge, especially for a tax-exempt organization. But dusting off an old RFP that was used to select a software vendor or a 401(k) provider simply won't work.

I think Mr. World Peace is on to something, and that credit union CEOs just might want to borrow this strategy for their own ends. Yes, I'd certainly be the first to agree, the leaders of America's credit unions aren't always the first to jump onto a trend, but theopportunities here may just be too good for even the stodgiest of execs to pass.