On May 25, 2009 in Frankfurt, Thomas M. Hoenig (President, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City) gave a brief speech entitled The Future of Retail Banking and Payments – Developers in Global Markets: The Role of Central Banks. You can obtain a transcript of here. Having read the transcript, more than once, there are few [...]

This is part 3 of a 3 part series…Part one and part two are linked for your convenience. On Friday I discussed the paid advertisements that appear when searching for the term “accept credit cards” via Google. Prior to delving into the concept of competition in a commodity market, I thought it would be interesting [...]

This is part 2 of a 3 part series. Part one is located here. As a brief administrative note. It is worth mentioning that H.R. 627, the “Credit Cardholder’s Bill of Rights Act of 2009″, has been signed by the president recently (in the last 15 minutes) as I am writing this missive. You can [...]

Let us begin with a bit of housekeeping… The blog post that prompted the missive below was originally posted on the Catalyst Code blog and is entitled Credit Cards Don’t Make People Spend More. Some of you won’t be surprised to hear that…Why are these people so up to date? Quite simple really… To the [...]

I’ve been spending a fair amount of time, recently, considering the concept of perspective*. As an arts geek (spending time both studying and “making”) perspective, in and of itself, is an intriguing topic. The impact that it had on modern arts cannot be understated. The concept is additionally intriguing as the practical implementation has clear [...]