This is the first of several posts I’ll do on the Consumer Financial Protection Agency that the Obama Administration has proposed to protect consumers and investors from financial abuse.
The Administration released an 88 page white paper on financial services reform on June 17th. The CFPA is a major new proposed agency and accounts for a […]

The financial services industry will be more closely monitored if much of President Obama’s regulatory plan that was released today gets enacted.
The White House team obviously put a great deal of work and thought into this plan. Congress, industry and the public will now need to go over it carefully. Here are four questions […]

The populist bandwagon to whack the credit card companies for a financial crisis they didn’t cause is still going on. The latest is proposed legislation —really a revival of stuff that’s been floating around—to help the merchants reduce the fees they pay to the card companies. You don’t need an advanced degree in economics—just […]

Do people spend more if they have a credit card? The answer will depend on who you ask.
Credit card companies say YES! when they extol the benefits of taking cards to grumpy merchants. And credit card bashers say YES! too when they pile on reasons for why credit cards should be banned. […]

I don’t dispute that some card issuers engage in bad behavior and frankly there have been times when I’ve been furious. But there is a lot of market discipline for this; if you threaten to switch cards the issuers back off. Proponents of legislation point to anecdotes of bad behavior. There is, however, no […]

Credit card issuers can be pretty annoying. They stuff our mailboxes with credit card solicitations, make us endure endless commercials about taking their cards, and seem to nickel and dime us with fees at every turn. The media continually reminds us of poor slobs who are up to their eyeballs in debt because they’ve maxxed […]

60 minutes on Sunday presented a report on a worm virus lying dormant in millions of computers worldwide awaiting instructions from China or Russia or wherever it was hatched that could instantly bring down the web. This morning, CNN reported that this virus has a name: “Conficker.” CNN also reported that it may go “live” […]

My folks are visiting from Chicago. My Dad, Harry M. Peterson Jr., 86, is, among many identities, a war hero, entrepreneur, comedian, lover of the arts, author, husband, Rotarian, and all around great guy. Throughout his life, he also has been a tinkerer with new technology, being one of the early adopters of plastic bottling […]

As I was cleaning out files the other day, I got to wondering if folks around the country are cleaning out their files like I am right now. A long-time friend of mine in the consulting business is reducing her number of offices from 7 to 3 and was cleaning out files over the past […]

A WSJ op ed today predicts that there will be an almost 60 percent contraction in credit card lines. I don’t know whether that number is precisely right but it is clear that banks are sharply reducing the availability of credit card lines. They are doing so in part for very good reasons and they […]