Comments of the Week: Brown-Vitter Brouhaha; Bank Payday Loan Crackdown
April 26, 2013 10:27 AM
American Banker readers share their views on the most pressing banking topics of the week. As excerpted from the Comments sections of AmericanBanker.com articles.
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On the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's 'creepy' data-gathering:
"Collecting enormous volumes of personal information for national security purposes: BAD. Collecting even more enormous volumes of personal information for 'consumer protection': GOOD. What's wrong with this picture?"
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On how to encourage good behavior in banking:
"We're spending too much time … with quantitative formulas and intellectual theories. Why not just hold the CEO's first born to insure good performance?"
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On the 'too big to fail' bill proposed by Sens. Sherrod Brown and David Vitter:
"I know a lot of people want blood, but let's think this through before we jump off the cliff. The real issue involves preserving the community bank model. What's the best way to do that? This bill ain't it; there are other options to consider."
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On the 'too big to fail' bill proposed by Sens. Sherrod Brown and David Vitter:
"This bill is certainly a step in the right direction of removing regulatory obstacles toward credit availability to the consumer."
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On imposing stricter capital requirements as a way to end 'too big to fail':
"Kick the capital ratios up in half-percent increments, and keep increasing them … All pricing will consider the incremental return on equity in a discipline that will improve the industry."
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On the side effects of using Basel III to control megabanks' risks:
"Damage to … community banks from Basel III will sound the end of banking in small towns and rural areas around the country, as credit availability becomes limited, carved-out canary products."
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On the view that regulatory costs disproportionately affect mid- to small-sized banks:
"Returns are shriveling, investors are deserting, and only Wall Street is defending the Big Six [megabanks]. The question is not whether the largest banks must shrink, but whether it will be voluntary."
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On why the success of savings and loan legend Howard F. Ahmanson is hard to emulate:
"Ahmanson, a risk taker, found the opportunity for success … today, leading entrepreneurial bankers are being regulated out of business by new policy and regulation designed to insure the risk takers become conformists."
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On the risk that monetary policy will causing the next financial crisis:
"Blaming monetary authorities for injecting liquidity into the market is like saying that 'the open bar made one drink too much.'"
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On regulators' crackdown on bank payday lending:
"All they will succeed in doing is pushing the folks that want the loan into the arms of payday loan companies … banks should be the ones to make these loans. They are the ones that are under regulatory supervision."
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On regulators' crackdown on bank payday lending:
"Regulators also need to crack down on the backdoor agreements banks have with the big interest lenders, giving them access to depositor accounts."
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On banks halting foreclosures to avoid paying for upkeep:
"Banks cannot be expected to solve all the world's problems."
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On how to bolster the mortgage market:
"At the risk of a public stoning, I will say it out loud: bring back subprime but, this time, with no implied government backed guarantee … If we continue to protect consumers and overly burden lenders, we will never see true private capital return."
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On how to bolster the mortgage market:
"The desire to fulfill the political dream of cheap 30-year fixed rate pre-payable mortgage credit for all is the problem, not the solution."
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