Posts belonging to Category banking



FDIC says 829 U.S. banks remain at risk for failure

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More than one-tenth of U.S. banks continue to be at risk of failure even as some sectors, such as credit quality, are showing some signs of recovery.

Around 829 of the country's 7,800 banks were on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s "problem list" at the end of June, up from 775 at the end of the first three months of the year, the Wall Street Journal reported. Already this year 118 banks have failed, well ahead of last year when 140 went under.

It's still difficult to get a loan; total loan and lease balances fell 1.3 percent from April through the end of June. Total banking assets fell 1% to $13.2 trillion during the quarter.

FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair says banks are starting to ease lending standards in some cases but warned that "lending will not pick up until businesses and consumers gain the confidence they need to hire and spend."

The FDIC also says there were 104 fewer banks in the second quarter compared with the first quarter, and for the first time in the last 38 years, no new banks were added.

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Can a piece of plastic make online banking more secure?

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Despite the best efforts of banks and security experts, Internet fraud continues to cost consumers millions of dollars every year. But a new credit card sized piece of plastic has the potential to stop one of the most popular forms of online fraud; fooling consumers or their banks into handing over information that can be used to empty accounts.

This credit card sized piece of plastic that inventor Matt Walker hopes to stop Internet fraud cold in its tracks is the PassWindow, which is a finalist in the Asian Innovation Awards.

Instead of the expensive-to-distribute security tokens that some banks use to verify the identity of a consumer, the PassWindow can be built into your existing bank debit or credit card and operates in a simple manner.

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How finance reform affects us directly

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The historic finance reform bill hammered out by a House and Senate panel is 2,000 pages long, but WalletPop had its yellow highlighter out to spare you one brutal summer read. (Actually, we had a lot of help from Reuters and The New York Times.)

Here are some of the tidbits on how the bill will play out for consumers if it passes, as expected, next week:

No help for the fallen: Our federal dollars would supposedly no longer be used to bail out massive misbehaving outfits like AIG and Lehman Brothers, which went bankrupt. The next time a conglomerate of suits goes belly up, the government vows to sell their pieces off like scraps to the bidding dogs. That hopefully means our tax dollars will be better used.

Credit transparency: If you're denied a loan, a mortgage or a credit card because of something fishy on your credit report, the denying party will have to show you what's fishy -- for free. We like anything free, even if it's a FICO revelation.

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