PayThink

There is and has been for decades a general view that no matter how much you beat up on banks they will just figure it out and keep on keeping on. Of course, that advice has never been true for the whole industry.

In Credit Union Land, April showers may have brought, um, warnings of higher capital standards, the shutdown of a CU alleged to be a front for online gambling, and a full-scale blitz from all sides related to debit interchange, yet of all the mail I received from readers during May the No. 1 issue was, as you most likely expected, all about Zombies.

I'd like to see our share insurance assessment reduced just as much as any other CEO, however, if it comes at the cost of the DFI/NCUA removing credit unions from their members by forcing mergers based on phony numbers — count me out.

Having accurate, standardized data will allow financial institutions to search their databases more easily and have confidence in their data integrity. It is just one simple step in a long line of changes that will need to be made as the Dodd-Frank Act continues to be rolled out.

No one seems to notice the death of small corporate credit unions in the wake of the corporate system meltdown. On Friday, April 29, 2011, Midwest Corporate FCU closed its doors forever, the victim of a hit and run when U.S. Central FCU and four other corporate credit unions had a heart attack at the wheel of the bus and ran over the small compact cars known as small, pass-through corporate credit unions.

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Banks don't usually say they're sorry when they settle cases in which law enforcers accuse them of mortgage abuse. Sometimes the banks don't even like to use the word "settlement."

It's been a tough week for Google payments vice president Osama Bedier. On Thursday Bedier was hit with a lawsuit by his former employer, PayPal. That came on the heels of accidentally exposing his credit card information during the public introduction of Google's new mobile wallet.

Don't do it. That is the advice more moms, dads and other adults — including participants in a recent American Banker Analyst Roundtable — are giving young people who consider banking as a career path.

Counterterrorism finance efforts should shift away from our current compliance-based structure toward one that rewards ingenuity and activism among banks.