PayThink

This newly discovered, expanded version of Aesop's most famous fable bears an eerie resemblance to the modern day and sheds new light on its tragic moral.

Banks today are struggling to pull together complaints data from multiple sources for analysis, resolution and reporting. There is also the challenge of interacting with customers, especially when something goes wrong.

The average credit union is billions of dollars smaller than the behemoth banks. And the overall quality of credit union business loans is much higher than that of bank commercial loans.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau raised concerns in a bulletin that consumer reporting agencies may be holding free information from their customers. They have issued warning letters to six agencies that have made it too difficult for consumers to find their annual reports.

It would appear that a bank could not negotiate a loan on more favorable terms than the deal I was looking at. Yet, something did not make sense.

Consumer-focused regulations, in general, should reflect what financial products actually do, not the technicalities of who issues them or what legal status they hold.

Federal Reserve Board Gov. Daniel Tarullo gave a glimpse of what significant policy changes U.S. regulators are considering for the supervision of large foreign banking organizations in a speech at Yale University's Law School.

The bureau could offer an X Prize, encouraging companies to solve problems through competition or invite applications from entrepreneurs and financial companies, providing those with the most promising ideas a time-limited waiver for pilot tests.

The very same low interest rates and easy credit terms that ran up the "for sale" housing business are now busily at work running up the multifamily rental business.

The risk profession continues to aid and abet our tendency to want to quantify everything. But understanding real life is ultimately a social, not physical, science.