Competition has helped drive down fees and increase transparency on prepaid debit cards, but new studies show that some cards still deliver little value for the cost.
FDIC
America to Banks: We’re Just Not That Into You
The number of Americans who have cut the cord with mainstream banking has risen by 821,000 households in just two years, a newly released survey finds. One in 12 households or 8.3% are unbanked, while another roughly 20% are what researchers call “underbanked.” We’re ostensibly well into economic recovery, so why are more of us telling …
Are ‘Safe Accounts’ the Answer to Our Consumer Banking Problems?
So-called Safe Accounts offer extremely low fees and no overdraft penalties. Banks are still experimenting but the early results have been encouraging and a product geared at the unbanked may just right for many others too.
What Happens When the Next Too-Big-to-Fail Bank Goes Under?
One of the great thorns in the side of the American public is that the too-big-to-fail banks that were the cause of the financial crisis are still around today. They are employing many of the same people and paying dividends to …
Zombie Debt: A Real-Life Horror Story
A person with blemished credit and a history of defaulted debts will have trouble getting a credit card, so an unsolicited credit card application can seem like a lifeline. But some of these cards come with some very sneaky fine …
10 Steps For Choosing an Online Bank
A recent chart in American Banker magazine highlighted that free checking at larger banks is getting scarcer. As recently as 2009, 96 percent of banks with more than $50 billion in assets offered free checking; now, that number …
They passed it, they really passed it
The House of Representatives just voted 223-202 to approve the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009. The Senate still has to approve its own financial reform plan, and once that happens (if it happens), there will be all sorts wrangling and compromising and sneaky inserting of provisions that hardly anybody will …
The story behind the year’s biggest bank failure
Fortune‘s Brian O’Keefe (the man who gave the Curious Capitalist its name) has an epic account of the rise and fall of Bobby Lowder and Colonial Bancgroup. Much Auburn University gossip is dished as well. Just one almost-randomly chosen example:
For years, Lowder’s most vocal opponent on the board of trustees was a lawyer named John
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The FDIC and its accounting tricks
My colleague Steve Gandel has a nice piece about the strange contortions the FDIC is now going through to avoid tapping its credit line with the U.S. Treasury. He writes:
The agency has a credit line with the Treasury to tap as much as $500 billion in emergency capital through the end of next year. But the FDIC is worried that if the
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Misunderstanding the FDIC
Bloomberg’s Jonathan Weil has an uncharacteristically boneheaded column about the FDIC’s money troubles. He begins:
The FDIC’s insurance fund is going broke, and Sheila Bair is wondering aloud about how to replenish it. This means one thing for taxpayers: Watch your wallets.
I learned about the column from FT Alphaville, which notes …