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Reputations Intact: Proud To Be a Community Banker
Reputations Intact: Proud To Be a Community Banker One of the sad facts of this modern world in which we live is that we are bombarded with "messaging" nearly 24 hours a day. Our senses are...
Wanted: Sanity in the Exam Environment
Wanted: Sanity in the Exam Environment Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Given that definition, to many observers ICBA’s...
Persistence Pays Off on Small Business Jobs Act
Persistence Pays Off on Small Business Jobs Act The long and winding road of passing legislation to stimulate the small-business sector came to a successful end this week as the House voted to send...
Credit Unions Having Their Cake and Eating it Too
Credit Unions Having Their Cake and Eating it Too It’s official: The nation’s credit unions get to have their tax-exempt cake and eat it too! Federal regulators last Friday afternoon announced a...
A Robo-Sign of the Times
A Robo-Sign of the Times The so-called Masters of the Universe are at it again. Some of the same large financial institutions that caused the financial crisis have engaged in practices that could...
We the People
We the People We the People go to the polls today to engage in our sacred, inalienable right. The outcome of today’s midterm congressional elections will select the citizens who will come to...
A Sea Change
A Sea Change Acting Comptroller of the Currency John Walsh called it a “sea change.” He’s right. Today the FDIC board of directors voted to base assessments on assets minus tangible capital instead...
Deal on Tax Extenders Could Offer Holiday Cheer
Deal on Tax Extenders Could Offer Holiday Cheer Bipartisanship can be hard to come by in Washington, but there are encouraging signs that Congress and the administration have heard the voice of...
Recalling the Harsh Lessons of the Past
Recalling the Harsh Lessons of the Past More than three years ago I wrote the following article on the dangers of uncontrolled competition and overconcentration in the financial markets. Having...
ICBA United to Work with Divided Congress
ICBA United to Work with Divided Congress Congress will have a new look when it returns to Washington this week. With a Republican House and Democratic Senate following November’s elections, many...
Regulatory Review Must Deliver Results
Regulatory Review Must Deliver Results It sounds like a step in the right direction. President Obama recently ordered federal agencies and departments to review regulations and to consider ways to...
“Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,” and Neither Does ICBA
“Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,” and Neither Does ICBA Usually the time I spend on a plane is a way to lose myself in a book, reflect, catch up on work or perhaps enjoy a movie. On a recent trip,...
Stop Punishing Main Street Banks and Their Customers
Stop Punishing Main Street Banks and Their Customers Hey, here’s an idea. Let’s punish the thousands of small community banks that played by the rules and stuck by their customers during the...
Love is in the Air for Community Banks
Love is in the Air for Community Banks I’m not one for schmaltzy dramas. For those of you who don’t know, I’m more likely to take in a movie with scenes from Gettysburg or Omaha Beach. But this...
ICBA Convention Recognizes America’s Financial Foundation
ICBA Convention Recognizes America’s Financial Foundation Last week several thousand community bankers met in San Diego at the national convention of the Independent Community Bankers of America....
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...
It’s About Community Banks
It’s About Community Banks Do you all recall the now-iconic Bill Clinton 1992 campaign slogan—“It’s the economy, stupid!”? Well, at ICBA, it’s the nation’s community banks, and it always will be....
Community Banks Are Our Business, Our Only Business
Community Banks Are Our Business, Our Only Business I was reviewing some legislative and regulatory items the other day, both from the recent past and current, and I noted several issues where ICBA...
Community Banks Are Financial First Responders
Community Banks Are Financial First Responders “Community banks remain a critical component of our financial system and our economy. They help keep their local economies vibrant and growing by...
Remember This: A Long History of Credit Union Mission Creep
Remember This: A Long History of Credit Union Mission Creep In case you’d forgotten, the nation’s credit unions have been making the rounds in Washington in recent weeks. There were about 5,000...
The Courage to Speak Out
The Courage to Speak Out The statement below made by the eminent economist J.K. Galbraith refers to the excesses on Wall Street that preceded the Great Depression, but it could have been made in...
Watergate and Regulatory Burden
Watergate and Regulatory Burden What do the infamous Watergate scandal and overwhelming regulatory burden on community banks have in common? “Follow the Money.” Many of us remember this quip from...