PayThink

The banks and credit card companies have spent 50 years building a proprietary, locked-down system that handles roughly $2 trillion in credit card transactions and another $1.3 trillion in debit card transactions every year.

The downgrading of U.S. government debt by Standard & Poor's Friday evening is a grim milestone in the history of American finance—and one that will be parsed in excruciating detail in coming days—but the ultimate practical impact on financial institutions seems likely to be minimal in the short term. The reasons are many.

A Microsoft security tool that has been criticized for being too intrusive can be turned off by the very malware it was designed to fight.

The buzz word "duplicative" has been making the rounds lately, employed by watchdog groups and politicians to describe government programs which overlap and offer redundant services at taxpayer expense.

Except when empowered by exclusive legal standing — for instance, in marketing checking accounts — banks consistently fail in competing to sell financial services to consumers. The most dramatic example is wealth management, but there are many others.

Recent regulatory developments in the U.S. and the U.K. attempt to reverse efforts to stamp out rating agencies. Their role must be trimmed back and banks must be encouraged to develop standardized methods of calculating risk and capital as a substitute for external ratings.

Banking has become a complicated business, and working with regulators and other outside parties such as auditors and shareholders makes it even more so. Management teams, especially directors, increasingly need simpler tools such as dashboard reports and guidelines rather than complex methodologies and models.

A former card-skimming thief has started a legitimate business that relies on other people getting arrested. He posts mug shots scraped from the websites of law enforcement agencies in the state.

Congress has expressed deep concern about the regulatory control of banks, yet at the same time wants banks to aggressively finance business and economic growth.

One court in California says it may be identity theft if a person uses a stolen password to pose as someone else on Facebook.