PayThink

A recap of the informed opinions (and the discussions they generated) on BankThink this week.

Sharp bookkeepers could spot a kite in progress, but, more often than not, they were too hurried to give the ledgers a second look.

With a litany of bipartisan reasons to oppose FATCA, ranging from privacy and sovereignty to U.S. economic competitiveness, it is startling that the legislation has advanced as far as it has.

The more that compensation designs depart from well-grounded pay-for-performance principles, including appropriate metrics and actual financial results, the less effective they are as an incentive

The most effective housing reform would let the GSEs do what they do best: act as a conduit for private capital to enter the residential lending market.

As much as David Fiderer and others try to defend the GSEs and the policies that drove them into insolvency, the taxpayers who bailed them out are unlikely to be fooled.

The tech company's new services represent a virtual slap in the face for the likes of banks and PayPal. If added to Google Glass, they potentially represent a knockout punch.

Advance America responds to One PacificCoast Bank.

Until a mechanism to shut the biggest and baddest is well in place, the prospect of taxpayer bailout will distort financial markets and handicap competitors.

For all their analytic complexity, the Basel capital standards simplemindedly view each type of risk in isolation. In reality, an increase in one type of risk may lower another.