Last May, I wrote about the Ohio law that, the legislature intended, would put the screws to payday lenders in that state. The law limited payday loans to four short-term loans a year and capped annual interest rates at 28......

The Austin-Statesman points out one of the many unintended consequences of federal government's deft management of monetary policy: the diminishing funding for legal services for the poor. Rock-bottom interest rates, part of the Federal Reserve's attempt to prop up a crumbling economy, are having an...

Bazllionaire Wilbur Ross, a man who's made a big play on mortgage servicing rights and who's waiting until the US government ":gets real" on the terms it offers to private investors before he jumps into the bailout of broken financial institutions, had some interesting opinions about the proposed bo...

Last week, we discussed a nasty little public advertising campaign being waged by a couple of Texas banks that didn't take TARP CPP money against those who did. At the time, I thought that while most customers wouldn't be influenced to switch banks by that particular pitch, and while I'd never advis...

Last month, real estate columnist Steve Brown shot off a nice little rant about how bank regulators were forcing banks to clamp down so hard on real estate lending that they were denying credit to good borrowers as well as bad ones. The Kansas City Business Journal provides further evidence of this ...

A recent action that received little coverage (other than by BankThink) was the request by Consumers Union that The Treasury Department order the OCC to rescind its preemption regulation. Consumers Union is trying to win the case of Cuomo v. The Clearing House Association, LLC through the back door....

Last fall, theology professor R.R. Reno wrote a long blog piece at First Things that defended the federal government's bailout from the attacks of his more ideologically pure brethren on the right. Professor Reno recently came back with a follow up piece this week that concedes that he angered a lot...

Reader Gregg Somerville, a stockbroker, sent me a link to his "rapumentary" ripping Hank Paulson. It may be a few months behind the curve at this point, but it remains hilarious. The line about Richard Fuld being the only guy who ever lost calling Paulson's bluff is a classic. I mean, we have to lau...

Yesterday's The Wall Street Journal documented the most detailed evidence to date that many community banks who don't need the government's TARP money are backing away from participating in the Capital Purchase Program, primarily because their "fear of the unknown" is being tipped into near paranoia...

The American Banker had an interesting article the other day (paid subscription required) about the private investors who the FDIC and other federal bank regulators are attempting to entice into making investments in banks and thrifts in need of cold, hard capital. According to a number of experts c...