PayThink

I recently caught up with friends, colleagues, and customers at a large banking conference.

The attempt by large banks to impose debit card fees wasn't just about wringing a bit of extra revenue out of existing customers. It was an effort by Bank of America and its competitors to rework their basic retail account business model.

Turning stolen U.S. credit cards into cash is tough if you live in a country that U.S. businesses won't ship to. Fortunately for the bad guys, there are websites that focus on solving that very problem.

What's easy to forget a decade later is that Sept. 11 wasn't so much a day as an era; the panic and nervousness and uncertainty brought about by the terrorist attacks didn't just fade away as October 2011 rolled around. In the months following 9/11, I was reminded of how the concept of "standard operating procedures" became anything but in the final months of that year.

Today, our business model may still require our members to cooperate, but credit unions (and their boards and executives) do very little in the way or cooperating, especially when it comes to "educating" the public about credit union "best practices" in personal financial behavior.

I worry about the future of a nation that refuses to acknowledge the true causes of the crisis, justifying actions by filing lawsuits against other wrongdoers. In reality, every check of the system failed to restrain the excess and greed or to correct the delusional optimism.

Bank of America's recent announcement that it plans on charging most of its customers a $5 monthly fee to make debit card purchases has touched off a firestorm of protest across the country. And for good reason. For most Americans, who have already paid dearly for the economic mess touched off by risky bank practices, this latest fee just adds insult to injury.

In some countries people are executed for "fighting against God." But in the U.S. the penalty for fighting against the government is less harsh. The market often exacts the appropriate penalty—for instance, in the case of Durbin.

On Oct. 25 MetLife announced that the Federal Reserve had denied its request for approval of its capital distribution plan that included a dividend increase and resumption of stock repurchases. Likely it is a reflection of a prudent regulator. Rather than make an isolated determination on a single company, the Fed probably prefers to await results from its planned 2012 cross-institution analysis of the largest U.S. bank holding companies. MetLife's participation in that analysis underscores its systemic importance.

Fake antivirus scams, which trick people into thinking they need to hand over their credit card info to update their antivirus, seem to be going away.