PayThink

In a March 12 letter, Sen. Bob Corker, a senior member of the Senate Banking Committee, raised concerns about whether the Financial Stability Oversight Council would wind down a healthy institution due to concerns regarding whether the bank is "too big to fail."

Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Bob Corker, R-Tenn., are asking Attorney General Eric Holder to clarify his admission last week about whether some financial institutions are too big to prosecute.

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling is questioning whether the Federal Reserve Board can transfer funds to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau if the is agency without an appointed director.

Empowering the unbanked to save and invest in themselves and others, through technology as simple as text- or Tweet-to-pay, will create opportunities to get people out of poverty.

Risk management issues, fair lending infractions, money laundering violations and civil money penalties will remain on regulators’ radars in 2013.

Private mortgage insurance and "senior-sub" securitization structures have advantages that could accelerate private capital's return to the mortgage market, despite the lumps they took during the crisis.

Using data commonly available on most core systems, a relatively simple, inexpensive concentration stress testing model can bring value.

Reform efforts could result in a much smaller scope of permissible lending at the FHA, with a renewed focus on its traditional core of low-income customers, higher credit score requirements and increased down payments.

Proponents of breaking up big banks trumpet Attorney General Eric Holder's complaint that some are too large to prosecute. But indicting companies for individual employees' actions would indeed be reckless.

The nonexistence of "too big to fail" is swell news. Now taxpayers can stop worrying about future bailouts, the Federal Reserve can ease monetary policy and the Justice Department can prosecute the banks purportedly "too big to jail."