PayThink

While some call Bitcoin an "existential threat to the state," local governments could soon embrace the digital currency and payment system as a practical alternative to credit and debit cards.

The Federal Reserve Board on Monday issued a proposal required under the Dodd-Frank Act that would impose a fee on the biggest bank holding companies. The fee will cover expenses related to the regulators' supervisory duties.

Companies that submitted initial resolution plans last year to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. under Dodd-Frank have been offered more detailed instructions for when they submit their second drafts of their living wills.

Publication of the Fed's loss estimates, required by Dodd-Frank, has banks focused on second-guessing the regulator's model, rather than the hard work of improving enterprise risk management.

Avoid closing locations solely based on performance, test drive outreach programs and consider other options, such as amending hours, before shuttering an underperforming location.

Policymakers clearly don't want to harm small banks, but it's difficult to see how they can insulate us from the macroeconomic effects of some of the proposals being considered.

The requirement is a symptom of a larger problem: Inherently local knowledge is needed for most of the regulations tasked to regulators in Washington.

The United Nations may have declared with much fanfare that 2012 was the International Year of the Cooperative, but U.S. CUs seem not to have gotten the memo until 2013.

Michael Moebs, CEO and Economist of Moebs $ervices, asks "why are banks taxed?"

M. Troy Freedman, an attorney with Richard M. Squire & Associates, LLC, explains how to be proactive and be prepared in dealing with foreclosures.