MoneyRates Blog
Will Big Banks Really Be Broken Up Into Bits and Pieces?
Not sure if you’ve been following the latest bank hearings–there have been so many of them over the past year, who could begrudge you for missing out–but these bank hearings may be bigger than most.
The Senate is dicussing what to do about the “too big to fail” big banks and too big other companies that [...]
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“Too Big To Fail” Legislative Talk Has Disturbing Overtones
Just about everybody except bank executives with a vested interest agrees that some legislative changes need to be made in the wake of last year’s banking crisis. However, legislating in the wake of a crisis is not without risk — sometimes an overreaction can exacerbate a crisis.
In a subtle way, one has to look no farther [...]
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A Delicate Balance: Regulation, Stability, and Bank Rates
It’s understandable that last year’s banking crisis should spark a renewed drive for financial regulation. It’s unfortunate that the legislative responses so far seem to be barking up the wrong tree.
As promised (or threatened, depending on how you look at it) Senator Christopher Dodd introduced legislation designed to limit banks’ ability to charge overdraft fees. [...]
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Bank Earnings Hugely Dependent Upon Trading
Money-Rates banking expert Richard Barrington called yesterday for politicians to take another look at the Glass-Steagall Act, a longstanding financial regulation that separated banking from investment activities, and was repealed in 1999 with the Gramm-Leach-Biley Act.
While this advice to politicians certainly makes extensive sense and might lower the risk of individuals holding money in money market accounts, savings [...]
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A Modest Proposal for Bank Regulation: Revisit Glass-Steagall
A year after the banking crisis, politicians continue to posture for public consumption about imposing new regulations on the banks. So far though, congress has been more talk than action when it comes to fixing the banking system, and even that talk has merely nibbled around the edges of the problem.
Congress has taken the populist [...]
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Banking or Health Care: Which Is In Greater Need of Reform?
Talk of Federal regulation is swirling around two industries: banking and health care. Both are essential to our modern way of life, and both have their critics and backers. The health care system has never gone through a massive meltdown like banking did a year ago, but many people see it as suffering a slow [...]
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What’s the Right Cure for High Bank Fee Rates?
Senator Christopher Dodd is reportedly planning on introducing legislation to curb high bank overdraft charges. These charges have been on the rise lately, as banks look for various ways of shoring up profitability. Certainly, overdraft charges can seem excessive, but is legislating against them really the right solution?
According to research firm Moebs Services, the average [...]
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Strength of FDIC Fund Could Affect Bank Rates and Security
It has been widely reported that the FDIC’s deposit insurance fund has been rapidly declining, raising concerns that it might require special funding soon to support the growing number of banks classified as troubled. In response, the FDIC has publicly clarified its accounting to show that the fund is not actually declining nearly as rapidly [...]
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An Odd Wrinkle In Mortgage Rates
One of the reasons that money-rates.com exists is that the market for bank rates — including deposit account interest and mortgage rates – is far from efficient. Everyone may talk about interest rates going up and down as if they all moved uniformly, but as you can see every day on money-rates.com, different banks offer very [...]
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FDIC Rolls Out Red Carpet for Private Equity (sort of)
The FDIC recently loosened the rules for private equity investments in banks. In the near term, this shouldn’t cause so much as a ripple of reaction from depositors — people don’t generally think about who owns their banks, they just want to know that their money is safe and how to get the best savings account [...]
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$8 Billion CD Fraud Alleged. What Will You Pay For Risk?
The SEC claims a banker defrauded investors in an $8 billion CD scheme. Peter G. Miller looks at the motivation behind such investments.
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