Bits about Money

Recommendations of works of fiction of interest to financial practitioners or enthusiasts.

Regulation-induced monocultures meet unfortunate but explicable engineering decisions.

Title insurance is grossly overpriced relative to actual risks involved. Why is that?

Ever transferred assets between brokerages? Impressive, terrifying machinations happened in the background. No cats were harmed.

How digital wallets work, and how payment costs drive a lot of product decisions inside and around them.

Credit card rewards are mostly funded out of interchange, a fee paid by businesses to accept cards.

Ever wondered about what happens when banks are closed or why some apps have operating hours? It's fascinating.

Check cashing, as a business, is a poorly understood "alternative" financial service.

Payroll processors exist to provide financial infrastructure and because political economy is complicated.

A lot of more modern financial infrastructure follows the paths blazed by checks, at least in the U.S.

Jurisdictional gamesmanship is a common strategy for crypto businesses. Here is how it worked out for Binance and its CEO. Spoiler: poorly.

The structural reasons why banks sometimes behave bizarrely in interactions with customers, like forgetting things which customers tell them.

A review of Zeke Faux's Number Go Up, with some bonus commentary on financial journalism and Tether specifically.

Credit card debt is the waste stream of consumer finance. The debt collection industry ends up being sordid, for complex structural and microeconomic reasons.

A brief retrospective on an attractive product First Republic used to offer, and a wider discourse on the banking crisis.

Many observe that banks seem to be blowing up due to predictable consequences of rising interest rates. How did we get here?