Never one to hold his tongue, MidSouth Bank President and CEO Rusty Cloutier wrote a recent column in American Banker urging community banks to speak out during the presidential primary season.
And though the column is recent, Cloutier’s speaking on a topic that’s been echoed heavily by his industry colleagues over the past year: Community banks, according to Cloutier and other small bankers, are suffering from a regulatory recession while big banks that led to a financial crisis are continuing to roam free:
Over the next decade the community banking industry as a whole may be a much smaller force than it is today.
The community banking industry has the upper hand in the presidential race over the next few months as the caucuses and the primaries in the Main Street states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina determine the front runners on the Republican side. In these states, we can make a plight of community banking and our Main Street problems one of the focuses of the debate.
Remember what Tip O’Neill said about national politics, “all politics is local.”
If you live in one of the states that has an early vote in the election of the new president you need to be present at the town hall meetings or small group discussions and vocalize how the small banks in this country are being hog tied by regulations and not able to do business the way we used to help build this great country.
At the same time the people who should have been brought down by what they did to cause the great recession of 2008-present are still doing what they do.
Read more of Cloutier’s column here.
For more on banking regulations that threaten community banks, check out our ABiz cover story, Regulatory Recession.
MAY 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
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