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Interchange Legislation—A Reason to Dig Deep
Interchange Legislation—A Reason to Dig Deep The will of the nation’s community bankers to make their voices heard in Congress has never ceased to amaze me. Once again, it is time for community...
Cramdown: A Bad Idea That Continues to Smolder
Cramdown: A Bad Idea That Continues to Smolder Sometimes bad ideas are like grease fires—they can be hard to extinguish for good. In fact, one bad idea that ICBA has repeatedly doused with common...
Drawing Parallels to a Nation at War With Itself
Drawing Parallels to a Nation at War With Itself I just got back from an Executive Committee meeting in the great state of New Mexico. On April 12, 1861, guns in Charleston harbor opened up on Fort...
Big-Box Stores Selling Smoke and Mirrors on Interchange
Big-Box Stores Selling Smoke and Mirrors on Interchange A recent Washington Post op-ed suggests that small businesses should be wary of the promises of big-box retailers. A study conducted by David...
Strike Zones, 60 Votes and the Interchange Amendment
Strike Zones, 60 Votes and the Interchange Amendment When I was young I was a baseball player—a southpaw pitcher. I learned early on that each umpire had a slightly different variation on the...
The Genius of General Grant and Community Banks
The Genius of General Grant and Community Banks General Grant did not win one single battle against General Lee’s vaunted Army of Northern Virginia until the last nine days of the Civil War—but he...
ICBA: Celebrating Independence Every Day
ICBA: Celebrating Independence Every Day Like many of you, I got to enjoy our recent July 4th holiday with the essential ingredients for celebrating our Independence Day: family, friends, food and...
ICBA Looking Ahead at One-Year Mark
ICBA Looking Ahead at One-Year Mark It’s hard to believe, but one year ago President Obama signed into law perhaps the most significant financial reform bill in my lifetime. A year later, the...
Backdoor Bailout for Wall Street, Back of the Hand for Main Street
Backdoor Bailout for Wall Street, Back of the Hand for Main Street After nearly a decade of living inside the beltway, not much happens in Washington that surprises me anymore. But I was astounded...
Jackson Hole, Bernanke and Lagarde
Jackson Hole, Bernanke and Lagarde I returned from the Jackson Hole Federal Reserve Economic Symposium having listened to Federal Reserve Board Chairman Bernanke and International Monetary Fund...
How You See the Glass Sets Your Future
How You See the Glass Sets Your Future Experience has convinced me that Norman Vincent Peal was right! How you think of the future will determine it. If you always see half-empty glasses, that is...
Cockroaches and Community Banks
Cockroaches and Community Banks The exterminators are at it again. Another “pundit” is spraying around the latest prediction on the demise of the community banking industry. This particular...
Merchants Having it Both Ways on Interchange and Fraud
Merchants Having it Both Ways on Interchange and Fraud A recent security breach helps demonstrate that when it comes to fraud and interchange price fixing, merchants apparently are looking to have...
Regulatory Burden, Community Banks, and Voices
Regulatory Burden, Community Banks, and Voices There is no doubt that community banks are suffering under a plethora of stifling and, in many cases, unnecessary regulations. For several decades...
Assessment Savings a Testament to Community Bank Resilience
Assessment Savings a Testament to Community Bank Resilience For years we made the case that the deposit-insurance assessment base is unfair for community banks. And for years no one seemed to...
One Size Does Not Fit All
One Size Does Not Fit All The community bank business model is nothing like the Wall Street business model. So why would we want Wall Street firms or mortgage banks to speak for us any more than...
New Report Sheds Light on Wall Street Inequity
New Report Sheds Light on Wall Street Inequity I highly encourage community bankers to read this week’s report from Bloomberg Markets Magazine on the financial assistance provided by federal...
Outrage
Outrage Wall Street Gets the Gold; Main Street Gets the Shaft! We all suspected this, and now it is public. More than 1,000 community banks suffered severe damage as a result of their GSE preferred...
Underdog Champs as Gritty as ICBA
Underdog Champs as Gritty as ICBA Anyone who knows me knows that I am a fanatic St. Louis Cardinals fan. So I was in baseball heaven last Friday night. And it got me to thinking about the Cardinals...
Is this Justice?
Is this Justice? A recent New York Times article exposes the double standard in regard to enforcement actions between community banks and too-big-to-fail institutions. The article finds that...