PayThink

Security experts typically advise using Apple computers for sensitive tasks, such as online banking, because there are fewer viruses targeting the platform. But a new bug tears down one of Apple's major defenses.

Banks are ideally positioned to use their data on consumers' purchase histories and merchant relationships to send targeted daily-deal offers to customers. Groupon's random solicitations wouldn't stand a chance.

This is a particularly tough period for regulators and for bankers. We are still in a tenuous recovery from the 2008 financial shock and are living in the midst of a weak, indeed, anemic economy. Most banks have forgone profits for balance-sheet repair, as they should, with success: U.S. balance sheets are stronger today than before the financial crisis in 2008.

Washington's newest super-agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, sprang into life in July. That bureau was granted remarkable powers by Congress. Consumers and businesses alike will depend on the stability and effectiveness of the new bureau. However, Congress unwittingly may have infected the bureau with the equivalent of a latent computer virus that could damage the CFPB's ability to function, and shatter the expectations of its supporters.

After cracking open an automated teller machine to extract the $6,000 it contained, burglars doused the crime scene in bleach to cover their tracks. Some of the suspects told police that the bleach idea came from a Ben Affleck film called "The Town."

The policy focus should be how to ensure no single financial institution becomes a single point of systemic failure – not how to mitigate the fallout when a SIFI fails.

Mr. Swanick got one thing right in his piece "So Where Are Those Post-Durbin Price Reductions for Consumers?" (Oct. 10): "No one likes price increases, especially when they appear suddenly and without apparent justification." Hidden, unjustified price increases are what the merchant community and our customers have been facing for years with the way big banks and card networks collude to set both credit and debit card interchange swipe fee prices.

It may seem difficult to envision exactly where robust economic activity and growth can be generated in the U.S. right now. However, there is a promising area of growth for the nation's economy: exports and international trade.

When I am asked "How do we get bank customers back into the branch?" my answer is simple: How would you get them back into a Borders or Blockbuster store?

The U.S. and the world should follow the lead of the U.K. Vickers report and ringfence traditional banking, so shareholder equity and depositors’ money can be used only to lend to viable borrowers.