PayThink

The federal government could avoid many unnecessary bank failures by making targeted preferred equity investments in community banks with a Camels 3 rating.

Why go on a shopping spree when you can go on a "skimming spree"?

The Treasury and the banking industry would like nothing better than to see more credit unions convert to taxpaying banks. This is hardly going to happen if CUs perceive the OCC as an inhospitable regulator of their mutual form.

Risk management expert Clifford Rossi looks at two recently released documents on the FHA, which he says together "bear ominous warnings about a portfolio in excess of $1 trillion."

Canada is replacing its paper $100 bills with plastic ones to deter counterfeiting.

This is the time of year when bank boards of directors and management begin the strategic planning process for the following year. There will be few years in the careers of any of us that will provide as many seemingly one-time events as will this coming year, 2012.

It might not be well-reasoned; it might not always be civil; and it might not be fair. But the Occupy Wall Street movement, with its anti-finance bias, is with us and it is real. And unless the economy improves, or some other dramatic event occurs that at the moment seems remote, the reality is that banks are stuck for now in a reputational backwater.

The U.S. Treasury is looking beyond the insured banking system in an effort to improve the delivery of viable credit alternatives to consumers.

Another bank finds itself facing a lawsuit over a takeover of a business customer's account.

The political jousting over the structure and leadership of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau continues, but the real work of the agency and its professionals has begun. That work will ultimately determine, among other things, whether the CFPB will be a rules-based or enforcement-based agency.