Seeing like a Bank
The structural reasons why banks sometimes behave bizarrely in interactions with customers, like forgetting things which customers tell them.
Previous issues of Bits about Money
A review of Number Go Up, on crypto shenanigans
A review of Zeke Faux's Number Go Up, with some bonus commentary on financial journalism and Tether specifically.
Credit card debt collection
Credit card debt is the waste stream of consumer finance. The debt collection industry ends up being sordid, for complex structural and microeconomic reasons.
Requiem for a bank loan
A brief retrospective on an attractive product First Republic used to offer, and a wider discourse on the banking crisis.
Deposit franchises as natural hedges
Many observe that banks seem to be blowing up due to predictable consequences of rising interest rates. How did we get here?
Deposit insurance maximization as a service
In the wake of the recent banking crisis, there is some attention to deposit insurance limits. Some products increase them; here is how.
Banking in very uncertain times
We may be in the early stages of a banking crisis: why, what we're doing to avoid it, and what we may not get about it.
Improving how credit cards work under the covers
Card networks are legacy systems. Some bugs have persisted for decades, surprisingly, but they can be fixed. Stripe provides examples.
Money laundering and AML compliance
A brief overview of what money laundering is, what financial institutions do about it, and why.
BAM's Early Adopter discount ends soon
Bits about Money's Early Adopter discount ends on January 31st, 2023.
KYC and AML: beyond the acronyms
Know Your Customer policies at financial institutions have more nuance than you'd expect.
BAM is now reader-supported
Bits about Money now offers paid memberships. (Plus, a bonus essay on newsletter financial infrastructure.)
The infrastructure behind ATMs
ATMs are connected to banks by networks which operate little-understood payment rails.
Credit cards as a legacy system
Credit cards have been in use for almost 75 years. Some long-ago decisions still cause consequences in the present day. But change is possible.
Demystifying financial leverage
Leverage is actually reasonably easy to understand, both in the math and in the implications for financial firms.
Get essays a bit faster
I write roughly biweekly on the intersection of tech, financial infrastructure, and systems thinking. It's free.