'Elegant and Fascinating Dead End': Comments of the Week
December 9, 2016 7:30 AM
American Banker readers share their views on the most pressing banking topics of the week. Comments are excerpted from reader response sections of AmericanBanker.com articles and our social media platforms.
On the potential of blockchain technology to deliver return on investment:
"Blockchain is an elegant and fascinating dead end. It serves one useful purpose, namely enabling the Bitcoin market. There is no other useful application of what people call 'blockchain' outside of the [Bitcoin] world. There are no economies of scale and little utility in using this clumsy approach to encryption."
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On the House passing a bill removing the $50 billion-asset threshold for determining if a bank is "systemically important":
"It's clear from this action that the large financial institutions know better how to grease the wheels of the legislature, while community banks appear to matter a lot less to Washington."
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On constitutional questions about the authority of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau:
"Man
that pesky Constitution. You'd almost think the purpose behind it was to keep government and politicians in check."
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On President-elect Trump's selection of retired surgeon Ben Carson to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development:
"Appointing people based on their loyalty with no knowledge or experience will often have disastrous consequences as the appointees may try to curry favor with the President by rewarding cronies and supporters with government contracts and favors."
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On the potential showdown of Trump and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray:
"Trump and what's left of the GOP will have to face the genie and the bottle question. If they dismantle an agency designed to protect the financial fortunes of the citizenry in favor of allowing the banks to make up the rules as they go along, there will be a political cost they may not be ready to pay. The genie also has access to many forms of communication the banks should ask themselves if they would prefer one collection of complaints, managed by a single government agency, or a thousand channels hosting all of those complaints without any oversight or control. It's a brave new world, and all the soma in the world will not bring silence."
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On how anti-globalism sentiment is driving efforts to weaken international Basel rules (via <a href="https://twitter.com/rcwhalen/status/805822630477660161" target="_blank">Twitter</a>):
"Nobody really follows the rules anyway outside [the U.S.]"
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On Trump's campaign proposal to use restrictions on the remittance system to carry out immigration policy:
"If banks and financial institutions are profiting from remittances made by illegal 'immigrants'
wouldn't that be something the folks who perpetually accuse banks of wrongdoing be interested in stopping?"
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