Banking Law

TCF CEO Bill Cooper is mad as hell, and he's not going to take it anymore.

The man who recently told the Treasury Department that he's got a bad case of seller's remorse and wants to give back his bank's CPP investment, got everything that's been bugging him about the nation's financial mess off his chest. According to BankThink's Rebecca Sausner, who listened to Cooper rant at yesterday's SourceMedia?s Best Practices in Retail Financial Services Symposium in Florida, it was a rare glimpse into the utter honesty of man who's been around long enough that he's not afraid of anything other than running out of Viagra.

One of my personal favorites was his no-holds-barred take on the federal government's role in the meltdown.

?I believe at least 90 percent of this crisis was government driven, created by the government through bad monetary policy, the wrong kind of regulation, the whole impetus for managing economy, lending to the poor, encouraging what was in effect bad lending. All of this stuff was encouraged by the government, and a lot of honest bankers went along with it and didn?t make good judgments.?

Another two I loved, because I find the filing of Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) to be, for the most part, an egregious waste of time, were these:

On the value of SARs to national defense in the hands of the BSA regulators:

?What the hell? These guys couldn?t find this loan problem when it sat in front of them; they?re going to find a terrorist?"

?Does anybody think there?s not enough regulation in the banking business?? Cooper asked, to a burst of laughter. But, he argues, the regulation is misfocused on issues like BSA instead of fundamental safety and soundness. ?They come in and audit the living crap out of you on BSA. Have you guys lived through this? It?s a life/death experience if you flunk BSA. ?The only terrorist the BSA program has caught is Spitzer with his pants down.?

And who could resist a Henny Youngman moment.

"I thought swaps were what guys did with their wives in California."

Read them all. They're priceless.