PayThink

Loans with little or no down payment were the root cause of the recent financial crisis. The failure to save for health care and retirement is the root cause of the next financial crisis.

Private label credit card is the least expensive method of payment stores can accept. For that reason alone, it makes fundamental sense for every retailer to carry a program if feasible.

As an industry, we do not need to be piling new regulations on our own head. When we fail to present a unified front and effectively communicate to professional lawmakers, the result will be ill-conceived laws.

The House is expected to vote as early as Thursday on a bill which is designed to avoid the fiscal cliff. The bill would repeal the government's ability to seize failing financial institutions.

The Department of Justice and federal regulators are being asked to prosecute more individuals involved in breaking the law at financial institutions by Rep. Barney Frank.

"Although the industry's track record when it comes to Dodd-Frank implementation is hardly noteworthy, its war-game to test regulators' new powers to seize and dismantle a megabank is not only fascinating, it's exemplary," writes American Banker's Editor-at-Large Barbara Rehm.

If banks apply a standard of parity, they will wind up in a holding pattern because right now and for the foreseeable future, Internet banking is not keeping pace with mobile platforms.

We must pay more attention to placing blame where it exists and punishment where warranted, not foisting penalties off on shareholders, investors, customers and employees.

Eric Grover, partner at Intrepid Ventures, a financial services and payments consulting firm, questions why bank chieftains support the "stifling regulation" under the Dodd-Frank Act.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was questioned by Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, about problems with the credit reporting system in a study the agency released last week.