banking

Facebook’s Gareth Davis said at the GamesBeat conference in San Francisco earlier this year that Facebook is “looking at” a virtual currency, that makes perfect sense. Is it a pure virtual currency or is it kind of a dual currency, meaning including real money? A Facebook currency can facilitate a lot of new behaviors. A virtual currency and payment ecosystem has already been slowly growing within Facebook over the last 2 years.

We are finally reaching the end of the financial turmoil; it was bad but not as bad as anything close to the great depression. China is a key factor although many are skeptical. The dilemma facing Beijing will be to balance the use of its huge foreign reserves to boost its own slowing domestic economy against continuing buying U.S. Treasury bills. As the second-largest holder of U.S. Treasury bills, China will inevitably end up financing the $700 billion bailout plan ultimately went to the banks and auto industries.

By 2020, today's 39 year old will turn 50 and today 9 year old will be 18 and both represent a whole new generation of customers for the financial services. The 18 will be in the market for financial services and having gone through the banking and credit crisis they will be very skeptical of financial institutions. The newly turned 50 will be joining a powerful group of boomers that have very different idea of what they want for the second part of their life as well as their financial goals.

by: Jonathan Salem Baskin

A few days ago, I received further confirmation from my bank -- Chase -- that its brand is all about abusing me.

by: Sigurd Rinde

Or why the situation is not about Black Swans, it's about Plain Geese.

by: Roger Dooley

As the current financial chaos moves toward some kind of resolution, there will no doubt be plenty of Monday morning quarterbacking to explain what went wrong. One group that one wouldn’t expect to have explanations are neuroscientists. As it turns out, neuroscience researchers actually can shed some light on why things went so wrong.

Marketers are constantly facing the challenge of how to make an offer more attractive to their customers. Will free shipping garner more orders than a $10 coupon? What about a 10% discount, or a free tote bag? Smart marketers know there is only one way to definitively answer this kind of question: test the options in the marketplace. (Soon, perhaps, neuromarketing technology like fMRI brain scans may reduce the need for field testing…)

by: Rick van der Wal  via Business and Games Blog

by: John Caddell

A funny thing happened to me at the end of April. While I was on a business trip, our personal checking account with M&T Bank dipped below zero. I didn't get back from the trip till late Friday, then the weekend came. At any rate I didn't find out about the problem till Monday, when I checked the balance on line.

by: Dick Stroud

The dreadful term Spending the Kids Inheritance (SKIing) is one of the few age-jargon phrases that has stuck in mainstream language.