PayThink

Consumers who travel with debit or credit cards have no obligation to report their bank account balances or the size of their credit lines. Certainly those who rely on prepaid cards to access financial services should be entitled to the same rights.

The news that the CFPB's Deputy Director Raj Date will be leaving the agency has provoked anxiety in banking circles. Despite objections to the new agency, many have appreciated his expertise and deep understanding of the industry.

Companies that are proactive about intentionally harvesting as many diverse viewpoints as possible can inherently derive innovation out of inclusion.

Sheila Bair says we should prohibit examiners from quitting to work in the private sector, to keep them from gaining unjustly favorable regulatory treatment for the banks that later employ them. But the worse abuse runs the opposite way.

President Obama's reelection has given his administration a "do-over" opportunity in housing.

Internal governance policies should define for shareholders, employees and the public how the bank plans to effectively manage the stated risk appetite.

Federal Reserve Board Gov. Elizabeth Duke doesn't want to see new mortgage rules driving community banks out of the origination market. Exhibit A: balloon mortgages. They may have been abused by other lenders, but are a mainstay of community bank mortgage lending.

There have been some new twists in the strange case of an alleged attempt to blackmail Mitt Romney for $1 million in bitcoins, raising additional legal questions about the digital currency.

The old concept of real interest rate return is virtually nonexistent. Banks face temptation to reach for extra yield by taking more risk.

The Dodd-Frank Act, sold to the public as the tamer of the Wall Street titans, may well end up having a disproportionate impact on smaller institutions, thanks to the costs of capital implications of being "not too big to fail" and the advent of the CFPB, writes Cato's Louise Bennetts.