PayThink

In the aftermath of the crisis, Congress keeps piling on rules to enforce, without proportionately increasing the number or competence of examiners. Is it any wonder overstretched supervisors never asked, "What if home prices stop going up?"

"We have touted ourselves for more than 75 years as being cooperative," observed Troy Smith. "But the one thing we have always been lousy at doing is being collaborative." And standing there at the intersection of Lousy and Overlooked right now are five words, according to Hall: "Everyday is Bank Transfer Day."

Most of us are extremely busy. Another program or project isn't exactly an exciting proposition, especially a project with an ambiguous name like Enterprise Risk Management (ERM), otherwise known to consultants as "billable hours" and to regulators as a "finding."

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.