PayThink

Credit unions' century-old principles of mutual self-help are just as relevant today as they ever were. And credit unions' overwhelming support has shown that the corporate model of cooperation is clearly relevant, too.

Megabank CEOs want the Fed to disclose more about its stress test models. They can show good faith by supporting the international effort to make global counterparty risk transparent.

In 2004, I had the unique distinction of being perhaps the only person in history to have the U.S. Senate place a bounty on his head. I didn't rob a train. My crime was leading a federal investigation into misconduct at Fannie Mae.

In this revenue compressed environment, I hear a lot about initiatives to change bank culture from service to sales to drive badly needed cross-sell revenues.

The gods of irony must be alive and well at American Banker. It's hard to think of a better explanation for the April 30 tirade against "deadbeats" from Andrew Kahr — whose approach to the credit business was described this way in a front-page San Francisco Chronicle news story in 2002:

One of the obstacles to an acquisition is that the offers never make it to the board. They tend to come first through the target's CEO, who stands to lose a job (and compensation) in any sale.

An influx of deposits and shortage of lending opportunities have made the investment portfolio's performance more important to a bank's success. Banks can get bigger returns from these portfolios.

Recently, the issue of a lender's authority and right to pursue foreclosure on defaulted residential mortgage loans has become a subject of national interest. It is at the heart of the $25 billion settlement agreed to recently between the Federal government, 49 state attorneys general and the nation's five largest loan servicers.

The Fed's counterparty limit is not so much a banking rule as an indirect antitrust rule. It will create opportunities for smaller institutions to compete. That's the real reason terrified big-bank CEOs are meeting with Fed Governor Tarullo.

Executive compensation has been an important topic in the investor community for over a decade. Unfortunately, shareholders have gone largely unheard and the issue has been little more than a blip on the radar of corporate America.