BankThink

Mehrsa Baradaran's new book "The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America" ties together economic history, an expertise in banking regulation and the perspective of someone who's both watched a country be torn apart by extremism and been inside the American political machine.

The new president will shape the direction of banking policy, but because financial regulators are more insulated from politics than many other areas, that transition will be gradual.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has moved to ban medical debt from appearing on credit reports, but its analysis relies on a sliver of consumer data from more than a decade ago.

It has never been more important for banks, particularly those over $10 billion of assets, to establish ironclad data quality, governance and control standards. The failure to do so will have cascading negative consequences.

The ability to make cash transactions is vital to some Americans, and when technology fails us, it can be a lifeline for all Americans. We need to preserve it.

The overall size of the combined entity is trivial compared to industry behemoths. It is evident the benefits to consumers from the Capital One-Discover merger dramatically exceed the speculated harms that caution against it.

The dark secret about credit unions is that while rules have changed to allow them to make more commercial loans, their ability to underwrite those loans at scale is lacking. When the credit cycle turns, there's going to be a reckoning.

Keeping control of the Senate in 2024 was always a tall order for Democrats. Republicans thus far are on track to eke out a narrow majority — an outcome that would limit a prospective Harris administration's maneuverability in nominations and legislation.

Pandemic era changes to credit reporting have dangerously distorted credit scores for mortgage borrowers. The market is in worse shape than we realize, writes a former Federal Housing Finance Agency director.

Congress publicly excoriated the supervisors and CEOs of last year's trifecta of megabank failures. But, what about the directors who were supposedly overseeing those CEOs? The entire chain of bank oversight needs to be rethought from congressional hearing rooms to banking board rooms.