Banking Law

I'm traveling this week on business and will have little or no time to blog. I'll leave readers with some links to material to keep themselves occupied with actual worthwhile reading for a change, instead of the superficial snark you normally trip over here.

Rob Blackwell, Washington Bureau Chief of American Banker sent me a link to one of the paper's articles from Friday's edition in which reporter Cheyenne Hopkins sets readers straight to the fact that all the hoopla in the MSM about the "imminent" settlement between major loan servicers and state and federal regulatory and law enforcement agencies is a bit of smoke blowing. There are a lot of balls still in the air and anyone of them dropping could derail any "global" settlement. The article is outside the paper's firewall, so people who don't subscribe get a chance to sample the inside scoop presented daily to those who foot the bill.

The ABA Banking Journal had a recent excellent piece by Executive Editor Steve Cocheo entitled "Time to Reinvent the Community Bank?" The answer is "maybe." It's a great analysis of the problems that confront the traditional community bank today. You'll understand why many community bankers who've been in the game for years are starting to feel like the mouse who decides he no longer wants the cheese, he just wants out of the trap.

Finally, the analysis in a recent Banking Law Jouranal by King and Spaulding attorneys Jeffrey Telep and Jane Chen of FinCen's final rule on the confidentiality of SARs is definitely worth a read. All those SARs banks file that end up in the gullet of FinCen's pet goat are, nevertheless, extra special super secret under the law, and regardless of the fact that the vast majority of SARs result in a fit of inertia by law enforcement agencies, if a bank inadvertently leaks the mere existence of the SAR (much less any of its contents) to an unauthorized third party, the bank can end up "rendered" to a third world hell hole where water boarding is what people do for fun on spring break.

Peace, Out.