Opinions

The Justice Department handed down its third bank settlement under Operation Choke Point Thursday, bringing a civil complaint against Plaza Bank of Irvine, Calif., for failing to report a payment processor's relationship with fraudulent merchants.

Commerzbank has been ordered to pay a total of $1.45 billion in penalties, fire employees and install an independent monitor after it cleared transactions for entities in Iran and Sudan and facilitated payments for a Japanese company accused of accounting fraud.

The Justice Department has come under fire in recent months for its efforts to root out consumer fraud through banks, but Operation Choke Point appears to be gaining new momentum.

There is a leadership void in payments innovation. The Fed has the ability and the historic precedent to take up the mantle.

Two foreign-owned banks — Santander and Deutsche Bank — failed the Fed's stress test. Two other foreign banks that failed last year, HSBC and RBS Citizens, passed this year.

Citigroup Chief Executive Michael Corbat will still have a job tomorrow (and probably several days after that). The bank's capital distribution plan was approved by the Federal Reserve on Wednesday, undoubtedly to the delight of shareholders who were surprised by last year's rejection.

JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs were each forced to resubmit their capital plans in order to pass the Fed's CCAR stress test, while Bank of America was publicly faulted for weaknesses in its capital planning process. While some saw that as a bad sign, others contended the banks appear more comfortable in pushing the limits of the stress testing process.

Banks and other financial companies are engaging in disturbing new overdraft practices, violating fair lending laws related to mortgages and being too aggressive in how they collect student loan debt, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Wednesday.

Policymakers should stop assuming that homeownership is always better than renting and recognize the economic circumstances that young people will live with for the foreseeable future.

Apple Pay and cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin have a lot of appeal for banks looking to stay at the cutting edge of digital payments. But security and compliance risks are part and parcel of these innovations.