Bank Lawyer's Blog

Arbitrary, Instrusive, and Ubiquitous

Inspired by last night's post, a regular reader pointed me to last Friday's post by Tom Brown, who was off to the races over two recent utterances by high-level CFPB officials. The post's title, "The Beginnings of Overreach at the CFPB. Whatever happened to personal responsibility?" gives you a clue that he and I (and Marvin Umholtz) are singing from the same songbook.

The first object of Tom's ire was Stacy Canan, deputy assistant director of the CFPB’s Office for Older Americans, who stated in an NPR interview that “There absolutely are some financial advisors that are using the designations just for marketing purposes...and they don’t really have the substantive expertise and training to back up what that designation implies to investors,” and "Seniors deserve the right to understand whether they’re entrusting their life savings to someone who’s only had a weekend seminar versus spent months or even years of training to learn how to give adequate financial advice.”

Canan's solution is that the CFPB should become involved in establishing standards for the accreditation of financial advisers. This drove Tom to a fits of sublime snark.

Seniors can ask. “What does it take to become a Chartered Retirement Planner anyway?,” they might say. Or “What’s does becoming a Certified Investment Advisor involve?,” would be another good one. Now that I think of it, a prospective client might have other questions as well, such as about the planner’s prior experience and educational background. She might also ask for references. Back in the days before the CFPB, this sort of preparation was referred to as “common sense,” and Americans were actually pretty good at using it.

Canan made another pronouncement that I had to read twice to make certain that she said what I thought she said. “Seniors in particular often mistakenly believe that their financial advisor is looking out for their best interest. That is rarely true.” Tom's response to that wholesale slander of an entire profession was pithy.

Really? Advisors only rarely look out for their clients’ best interest? One wonders how they’ve managed to stay in business. Canan seems to believe that the investment advisory business is simply systematic, organized thievery. Worse, she seems to think consumers are too stupid to recognize that. But not to worry! She’s from the federal government and is here to help. I’ve got a better idea. How about we assume that consumers are capable of taking personal responsibility for their decisions, and can be expected to make the right ones? Decisions related to one’s finances are among the most personal an individual can make. It’s outrageous that a government agency, the CFPB, is scheming to get involved in them.

Apparently, we have folks at the highest levels of this agency whose regulatory bona fides isn't sullied with the grime of actually having any first-hand knowledge of the businesses they currently regulate and seek to regulate. If ignorance is bliss, they're perpetually orgasmic. Moreover, the desire to infantilize entire segments of the American populace and require them to look to the CFPB as their paternal (or matriarchal) protector is palpable.

Tom also takes off on the recent pronouncements by the CFPB on student lending, especially that the solution to the student loan crisis is for lenders to forgive and/or modify indebtedness and to extend more of it to students who don't pay it back. Throwing good money after bad appears to be a dead end to those of us with a actual lending experience. As another of my readers put it in an email to me, "I don't even know where to start with this bad idea." On the other I do know where to start: with the trash can.

In the end, he articulates well a frustration that many of us feel.

The people who run the CFPB seem to have the basic view that under no circumstances should  people have to live with the consequences of their own freely made decisions or bear their own personal responsibility. Instead, the government should always be able to intrude itself in people’s lives to “fix” things. The trouble with allowing the government to insert itself into every part of your life is that, well, the government is going to end up inserting itself into every part of your life. There’s a word for that: tyranny. The CFPB tries to portray itself as a paternalistic entity that’s only trying to help people. In fact, it’s bureaucratic monstrosity, funded directly by the Fed, that is accountable to exactly nobody. The ideas that people at the CFPB come up with sound benign enough now. But as they accumulate (and they will, trust me) they’ll seem arbitrary, intrusive, and ubiquitous—and, of course, expensive.. But by then it will be too late. The time to start objecting to the agency’s intrusiveness is now.

Save Me From Myself

Marvin Umholtz's latest CU Strategic Hot Topics email newsletter contains a lengthy discussion of a position paper issued late last month by the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC), which calls on the CFPB to restrict bank and credit union overdraft fees to the "reasonable and proportional" standard applied to credit card penalty fees by the terms of CARD Act, notwithstanding the fact that there is no express statutory requirement to apply such a limitation to overdraft fees. The NCLC argues that the CFPB has such authority by virtue of its ability to ban "unfair, deceptive, and abusive practices."

Of particular interest to Marvin, and to me, is the use of behavioral economic theory (previously discussed here) as support for the argument that overdraft fees are inherently "abusive" and "unfair."

This correspondent found of particular interest the NCLC white paper’s discussion about how the CFPB should leverage unfair, deceptive, or abusive practices authorities to price-control overdraft fees. It argued that overdraft fees were inherently unfair because they were not avoidable by a reasonable consumer. The NCLC said, “Accordingly, the analysis should take into [account] consumers’ likely knowledge gaps and their optimism bias, which has been shown by behavioral economics research. The information differential between banks and consumers is stark. As discussed in Sections II and III.B, supra, banks use sophisticated systems to keep track of consumers’ transactions and maximize overdrafts. In contrast, behavioral economics research shows that consumers are over-optimistic and tend to discount the likelihood of negative events. Nor do they have the capacity to quickly and accurately assess the risks associated with such contingencies. This gives banks the opportunity to attract consumers with, for example, a promise of ‘free checking,’ while at the same time charging high fees for overdrafts and engaging practices to maximize them that will far outstrip any savings from lack of a monthly maintenance fee. As a result, overdrafts and their associated fees may not be reasonably avoidable by consumers – especially the lower-income consumers who bear the brunt of these fees.” The NCLC’s anti-bank rhetoric is specious and mean-spirited.

Behavioral economics assumes that many consumers are uninformed and irrational and that consumers make systemic mistakes in their choice of credit products. Rather than let people make their own decisions behavioral economists believe that a central regulator should adopt policies designed to address that ignorance and irrationality. Behaviorists use these premises to justify big government intervention in the market to prevent consumers from harming themselves. The NCLC’s anti-overdraft narrative is reliant on this everyone-is-a-victim belief.

I couldn't have said it better myself. And now, I don't have to.

Marvin continues:

As the NCLC points out, the Dodd-Frank Act defines a practice as abusive if the CFPB finds that it (1) Materially interferes with a consumer’s ability to understand a term or condition of a consumer financial product or service; or (2) Takes unreasonable advantage of – (A) A consumer's lack of understanding of the material risks, costs, or conditions of the product or service; (B) A consumer’s inability to protect his or her own interests when selecting or using a product or service; or (C) The consumer’s reliance on a covered person [the financial services provider].  The NCLC white paper came to the simple conclusion that due to the inherent nature of overdrafts they were abusive.  NCLC wrote, “When choosing a bank or type of account, consumers cannot be expected to be able to know or compare how banks process transactions or what steps the bank will do to induce overdrafts.  The way in which transactions are processed by a bank is a complicated matter that consumers cannot reasonably understand.  Again, banks take advantage of the consumer’s reliance that the bank will not engage in activities to deliberately trip them into incurring overdrafts and being charged overdraft fees.”  Why does the empowering of the CFPB to make arbitrary and capricious “abusive” findings remind this correspondent of the in loco parentis “ability to repay” determination in other Dodd-Frank Act-mandated CFPB rules?  Apparently the ideologically questionable behavioral economists at the CFPB will know “abusive” when they see it.  Do the CFPB behavioral economists have any respect for individual rights – like the right to make one’s own decisions even if mistaken?

I think that the answer to that question is "No." Or, perhaps, "Hell, No!"

None of this should come as a surprise. Liz Warren's purpose in birthing the idea for the CFPB was to create a powerful independent federal agency, free from most oversight and any chance of "regulatory capture," to decide whether consumer financial products and services were "safe" for consumers. In other words, the basis for the CFPB is a belief in the use of the Nanny State to protect the proles from themselves because the state knows what's best for them even when they don't. Behavioral economic theory is the bedrock on which this house of cards is built. Moreover, the CFPB has been manipulating statistics in its war on overdraft fees for some time.

Get used to it, folks, because barring a "counter revolution," this is only the beginning.

You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains

The latest edition of Ballard Spahr's "CFPB Monitor" starts off with an article by Barbara Mishkin about how CFPB employees have voted to unionize. Apparently, getting starting salaries of $173,000, plus tuition for courses in basic banking law, are not enough for the employees of the most powerful, poorly regulated federal government agency created since Joe Stalin went to (not) meet his (nonexistent) maker. No, their backsides are severely chapped over heinous office accommodations. It seems that the CFPB is in the process of renovating its Intergalactic Headquarters, aka, "The Death Star," and while that renovation is taking place, the "proles" are being asked to place their posteriors in...<gasp>...Dilbert-like "open space." Their current office space is sufficiently annoying, since more than one person has to share a private office, but cubicles???? Them's fightin' words, Pilgrims!

One "source" claimed that CFPB employees are worried about noise levels. Heck, they carry a pretty big stick, so why don't they learn to talk (and walk) softly?

Look, I understand that when you're threatening to lock and load on some beat-down community bank that issued a disclosure statement that said "may" instead of "will," and, therefore, was massively "deceptive," or you're telling an auto loan lender that if a dealer from which it buys paper ever causes emotional pain to a buyer's pet parakeet, the lender is on the hook for the vet's bill, you would be sensitive about cross-talk. Obviously, you need to keep the brow beating appropriately segmented. I mean, look what happened when Bugs Moran encroached on Al Capione's space. It wasn't pretty, and those guys were mere amateurs when it comes to wielding a Tommy Gun.

Now that the CFPB employees are represented by a union, though, I'm certain that office space is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to workers' demands.

The union’s president is reported as having said that, in addition to workspace concerns, CFPB employees are concerned about travel policies and benefits, work schedules, reviews, promotions and alternative work schedules.  The report describes CFPB staffers as having “grown frustrated in recent months after putting in grueling hours as they raced to meet statutory deadlines” under Dodd-Frank.

I can imagine that working until 5:30 and even 6:00 pm can be wearisome if you have to do it day-after-day-after-day-my-god-will-this-never-freakin'-end!It wwould be suicide-induing if you had to grind it out in open space.

In the words of the last person to make the absolute best use of every second of every working day (and, especially, of every night) he spent in D.C, once intoned, "I feel your pain."

There Ain't No "There," There

Last week, an article by Andy Peters in the American Banker hit a nerve. It profiled a California bank that had tried to make small dollar loans work as an alternative to payday lending, but had decided to give up the effort.

One PacificCoast Bank in Oakland, Calif., is regrouping as it looks to battle payday lenders in the San Francisco Bay area.

The $282 million-asset thrift recently pulled the plug on its One Pac Pal loan, which it tailored to offer low-income clients short-term credit at reasonable rates and terms. The program, which began 18 months earlier, lost too much money, says Kat Taylor, One PacificCoast's chief executive.

"We have not yet found an economically sustainable product that's sufficient to save enough people" from payday lenders, she says.

I hate to say "I told you so," but...Oh, who am I kidding. I TOLD YOU SO!From August 1, 2007:

In June, when the FDIC issued its final Affordable Small-Dollar Loan Guidelines and FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair was pressing commercial banks to compete with payday lenders for the "Mini Me" loan biz, even banks in states like North Carolina, which kicked out the bottom feeders, were rolling their eyeballs in disdain at the prospect of rushing in to fill the breach. Among other problems, the Guidelines "encourage" banks to cap the APR at 36 percent.

[...]

The North Carolina banks banks profiled in the linked article didn't believe that there was enough bang for the buck to justify dipping their toes in the shallow water. Even the lone credit union that offered a payday loan-like product wasn't making any money on it because it was barred by state law from charging more than an 18% APR and it was actually requiring the loan to be paid back in 90 days. If it had only rolled the loan over (and over and over) and neglected to comply with the usury laws, it might, like Madonna, have been able to "get into the groove" and make some real payday lender-like money.

Lyndsey Medsker, spokesperson for the Community Financial Services Association of America, which, according to another article, represents about 60 percent of the payday loan industry, said the 36% annual percentage rate cap was a non-starter for commercial banks.

"There's an effort to cap loans at 36 percent annual rate, which the FDIC guidelines suggest. How that works into two- week loans is $1.38 per $100," she says. "I know payday lenders can't make money on that, so banks couldn't possibly either."

Mr. Peters' latest article also quotes a consultant as correctly noting that at the same time these loans pose a high risk of nonpayment, they bear a high regulatory compliance risk and, because credit scores must be thrown out the window (or reliance on them reduced), a high underwriting risk. Peters also notes that the FDIC ended its small dollar loan pilot program in 2009 because banks couldn't make a return sufficient to cover the risk.

One PacificCoast bank's experience is in line with the consistent experience of other FDIC-insured banks who've tried to beat payday lenders at their own game over the past six years. Basic business principles don't change. However, they've never ceased to be ignored in the service of an ideological agenda, one which holds that payday loans are evil because they have high fees that "trap" poor people in a never-ending spiral of debt, people who are too stupid and/or unsophisticated and/or desperate to think for themselves, and who must be protected from their inherent deficiencies by those who know better. Guys like Recess Richie and the Payday Slayers.

It's obvious that trying to use traditional banks as payday lending alternatives is not going to work. Unless, of course, you let them earn the same return that payday lenders earn.Which kind of thwarts the "higher purpose," doesn't it?

That's right Liz, reality bites.

Waters Attacked By Sudden Fit Of Reason

This past weekend, The New York Times set out to rehabilitate in the minds of community bankers the image of a woman whose performance in a congressional hearing was once described by The Atlantic's Megan McArdle as "like watching your crazy aunt challenge your boyfriend to prove that fairies aren't real." That's right, you guessed it: Maxine Waters.

The reporter describes a meeting between Mad Max(ine) and community bankers in her district in which Rep. Waters was feeling the pain of the bankers like she was channeling the mojo of William Jefferson Clinton.

“We’ve heard they chase down silly stuff,” Ms. Waters said, referring to regulators and shaking her head in disapproval. “I’m willing to take a hit” to help lower the capital requirements, she said. She even suggested the bankers hire new lobbyists to better represent them. “Influence us,” Ms. Waters said softly, reminding them of her new role as the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee. “Help us understand the intricacies of your business.”

[...]

As for Dodd-Frank, Ms. Waters said she stood ready to defend the law, but also instructed the bankers to compile a “laundry list” of their concerns. “I don’t want you to look at this as being impossible to tweak,” she said.

After an hour of swiveling nervously in their chairs, the bankers broke into grins. One executive slapped Ms. Waters a high-five. Another embraced her.

“You’ve softened,” Paul C. Hudson, the chairman of Broadway Federal Bank, teased Ms. Waters. “I love the new Maxine.”

What's up with this? Is it simply when Attila The Hun decides to ease up and only lop off the heads of the aged and infirm and spare the able-bodied, the populace reacts with an exaggerated feeling of appreciation born of a profound sense of relief, or is there something more going on here? If you need an objective analysis of a liberal icon, what better source to turn to than the notoriously fair and balanced Pravda New York Times?

The Times claims that in large part her "softening" not only toward community bankers, but toward some of the Wall Street big bankers she used to grill like burgers on a George Foreman 144-incher, is a result of her elevation to the position of ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, now that Barney Frank has retired. You'd think that circumstance might have the opposite effect: making her feel the need to out-Barney Barney in poking sticks in the eyes of bankers everywhere. After all, the opposition, which controls the committee, is traditionally a lot more pro-banker than is Ms. Waters. She might just as likely feel compelled to carry an even bigger torch for the anti-banker crowd.

The Times posits some theories.

A softer touch with the nation’s biggest banks could allow her to score points — and campaign donations — from an industry unhappy with her previous approach. And being more willing to compromise could also afford her new credibility on Capitol Hill to press her central focus — the cause of consumers.

Or maybe, as she ages, she's found that being a 24/7/365 whirling dervish of a whack job simply taxes her psyche and physique beyond human endurance.

On the down side, Ms. Waters' new-found reasonableness carries the risk of blow-back from the usual suspects.

“She should be shoring up regulators’ spines, not clipping their wings,” said Jeff Connaughton, a former lobbyist and Congressional staff member who recently wrote a book entitled “The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins.” Bartlett Naylor, a policy advocate at Public Citizen, a consumer rights group, called the derivatives letter [in which Waters urged the CFTC to delay derivatives trading rules for six months] “troubling,” adding that Ms. Waters “needn’t add her voice to the cacophony from antireform Wall Street apologists.”

Yes, that's right: if you're not adhering to the politically correct ideological line, you're obviously in desperate need of internment in a re-education camp. We get it.

Finally, however, the reporter begins to get to the nub.

The ranking member on the Financial Services Committee typically takes in millions in donations from the financial services industry. As of now, Ms. Waters has received few dollars from the banking industry. Other than a recent $2,500 donation from Goldman Sachs’s political action committee, her coffers are largely stocked with money from unions and other liberal causes.

I suppose the risk of alienating donations from consumer advocates is not so large when one considers how much more scratch Wall Street can cough up. $2,500 wouldn't cover coffee and a danish at Norma's, so you know that the Goldman Sachs of the world have a lot more largesse to spread on Maxine if she just continues to "listen to reason."

This may or may not be a trend. This may or may not be real. Whatever it is, it's entertaining.

Camden Fine Fires Off A Fine Salvo

In  recent opinion piece for Bloomberg News, ICBA CEO Camden Fine was in fine fettle, ranting about his favorite topic: new regulatory burdens are strangling community while the largest banks are doing just fine, thank you very much. Among his salient points are the following:

The megabanks are benefiting from what Bloomberg View calculated is an $83 billion annual taxpayer subsidy, the value of implicit guarantees by the U.S. Treasury. Bloomberg View was correct to characterize the too-big-to-fail subsidy as “a major driver of the largest banks’ profits.”

Perversely, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. data show that large banks have both the lowest credit quality and the lowest cost of funds in the industry. Community banks rank the highest in both categories even though they have had to compete for years against the megabanks’ access to cheaper money in pricing loans. In addition, community banks must compete against the big lenders’ lower comparative costs in handling regulatory paperwork.

While Cam complains that this is "morally wrong," I suspect that in a nation overrun with Pontius Pilates who sneer in the throes of their born-again relativism "What is 'truth'?," appealing to "morality" as a behavior influencer will have as much impact on Congress as a stern talking to by Pope Francis would have on Charlie Sheen. More effective on the morally challenged is likely to be his economic arguments.

Community banks should be putting their capital to work in the small towns, rural communities and middle-class urban enclaves they know well. Instead, they are focusing too many of their precious human resources on onerous paperwork and time-consuming compliance measures.

Community banks are the source of almost 60 percent of all small-business loans of less than $1 million, as well as mortgage and consumer loans tailored to the needs of their local communities. Large banking organizations with more than $50 billion in assets hold almost 40 percent of outstanding small loans to businesses, according to the Federal Reserve, but loans to small businesses aren’t a significant portion of large-bank lending. Small-business loans represent less than 5 percent of the large banks’ total domestic lending.

Cam outlines five specific steps Congress and the federal regulators could take to help community banks (and credit unions, for that matter, although Cam would choke on his own tongue before admitting it). They include:

• Easing up on some of the more onerous residential mortgage lending and servicing rules.
• Eliminating the requirement that community banks report on every new small business loan application.
• Requiring a cost-benefit analysis for all new regulations and prohibiting the issuance of any regulation where the cost exceeds the benefit.
• Raising the threshold to $350 million in assets for the requirement for an audit of a bank's internal controls.
• Eliminating the annual requirement for sending no-change privacy policies.

These are all helpful suggestions, but  I'm frankly surprised that he didn't also call for the carpet bombing of CFPB's D.C. headquarters and insist that Jamie Dimon's king-size bed be short-sheeted. Oh well, the year is not even half over. There's still time to get down to the really important stuff.

Charlie Munger: A Favorite Curmudgeon

Warren Buffet's long-time running buddy, Charlie Munger, agrees with Cam Fine about one thing: it's time to break up (or at least "simplify") the big banks.

In an interview with CNN at Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting, Munger, who is Warren Buffett's chief lieutenant, said he thinks the big banks are still too complicated and dangerous for the economy. But he doesn't think a recently proposed bill by Senators Sherrod Brown and David Vitter, which has gotten praise from others who want to rein in big banks, is the answer.

"I think if you increase the capital requirements and let them do what they want, they will just get in trouble again," says Munger.

Munger's preferred prescription sounds like a stricter version of the Volcker Rule, which was meant to limit risky trading at the banks and was included in Dodd-Frank, but has yet to be implemented. He would force the banks to get out of their business of underwriting and trading derivatives, financial contracts that allow you to speculate, some say hedge, on commodities, interest rates, and other things. About a year ago, JPMorgan Chase (JPM) announced it had lost billions on a credit derivative hedge that had not worked out as expected.

As CNN reporter Stephen Gandel notes, Munger's words carry additional weight, because he's calling for action against banks like Wells Fargo and Bank of America, institutions in which Berkshire Hathaway has sizable investments.

Munger thinks that big banks should be more heavily regulated, and that more regulation will be just what the profit doctor ordered. "By getting out of risky businesses, banks may end up giving back much less of their bull market gains in the down years" He thinks that banks should stick to their knitting, lending. "The ideal bank is pretty boring." I agree.

Gandel thinks that if Munger actually believes that more regulation and smaller size lead to greater profits, then he has a fiduciary duty to Berkshire's shareholders to press banks like Bank of America to pare down their size and accept tighter regulation (instead of unleashing the lobbyists on Congress).Munger thinks that's the job of the regulators. I'd argue it's the role of Congress, but I'd also agree with Munger that Berkshire Hathaway isn't going to persuade Bank of America to accept being broken up or buried under an avalanche of more regulation.

Munger said he and Buffett make investment decisions based on the world they are in, not what they wished it to be, which is fair.

Like Buffet, Munger has always pretty much said what he thinks. As he ages, he's not becoming any less candid. It makes for an interesting interview.

The OCC Takes A Body Shot

Housing Wire's Jacob Gaffney was kind enough to turn readers on to a recent snark-fest by John Stewart, in which he turned the heat up on both MERS and the OCC. It's a rare day when you have an audience howling over financial esoteria. For those, like yours truly, who missed this segment, enjoy!

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Residential Evil
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Indecision Political Humor The Daily Show on Facebook

A New Approach To Compliance

Steve Van Beek, NAFCU's Director of Regulatory Compliance, has a dynamite article in the latest issue of The Federal Credit Union, that community banks, as well as credit unions, would do well to heed. In addition to noting the obvious fact that Dodd-Frank's increase of regulations means increased compliance burdens for credit unions, he discusses a very important "paradigm shift" in the way credit unions (and community banks) need to view compliance. In the years "BFD" (Before Franken-Dodd), the compliance officer was often brought into the discussion of a product or service at a late date, and then gave it a thumbs up or thumbs down verdict. Steve rightly notes that the old school approach is a good way to be schooled by the CFPB.

Steve observes that the "CFPB's focus is principle-based as wellas requirement-based."

Not only will credit unions need to determine if their product or service is compliant with laws, regulations and guidance, but they will also need to expend resources to document that the product or service provides a benefit to members.

Why? Steve's glad you asked. Th answer is UDAAP: unfair, deceptive or abusive acts or practices. You have a new sheriff in town, the CFPB. It's focused on how consumers use products and services and how consumer service and product providers might "take advantage" of consumers. In other words, the CFPB seems to be running down the path of determining what products and services are "suitable" for consumers and which are not. It's a brave new world, one in which the old focus on checking off items on a compliance checklist is not going to get the job done. Instead, financial institutions will "need to build a UDAAP review into their product structure and development and monitor their products and services over time, as the UDAAP standard is not static."

There's a lot more meat on the bones, and I highly recommend that you read the whole article. It's a good warning shot across the bow of the critically dysfunctional and soon-to-be-beaten-down dinosaurs who squawk an outdated mantra: "Show me where it says I can't do that." Believe me, if you don't understand that it's a whole knew compliance ballgame and learn the new rules, pronto, the CFPB tire tracks will make a nice pair of bookends on the back of your bowling shirt as you lie face down and flattened in the middle of the consumer compliance highway.

The CU-Bank War Is Getting Ugly

Crying "The Time Is Right To Tax," commercial bankers are upping the thermostat on state and federal regulators to "level the playing field" by eliminating the tax exempt status of credit unions. According to the ABA Banking Journal, in a recent panel discussion at the American Bankers Association's 2013 Government Relations Summit, bankers of all stripes, including a CEO of a bank that was once a credit union, took the position that in this time when Congress and just about every state legislature is looking for ways to raise revenues without raising tax rates, the opportunity exists to convince legislators that tax exempt status for the credit union industry is an idea whose time has passed.

Panel member Ken Kies, managing director of the Federal Policy Group lobbying consultancy, spent years in Washington tax-writing roles, and believes banks could pursue a change.

"Frankly," said Kies, who's working with ABA, "I'm not sure that the environment has ever been better than it is today."

Kies indicated that no one should think that "not taxed" means "never to be taxed." History has not only seen many attempts to subject tax-exempt organizations to federal tax, but success in those attempts. Today's congressional urge towards tax reform, even on a revenue-neutral basis, could be the factor that pushes credit union taxation into reality.

In 1986, tax legislation pulled Blue Cross and Blue Shield organizations under the tax umbrella, reflected Kies. And a year later, the TIAA/CREF benefits organization likewise got shifted. And savings institutions lost their tax-favored status decades ago, and remain a viable part of the financial services business.

Mr. Kies also mentions the fact that there's a trillion dollar federal deficit that makes this the best time to press the case. However, he does not mention by how much that deficit would be reduced by taxing credit unions, which ought to show up somewhere in the argument if it's to survive counter attacks. 

Meanwhile, In Illinois, the hate-fest between banks and credit unions rages on.

Linda Koch, CEO of the Illinois Bankers Association, wrote an op-ed piece for The State-Journal Register in that state's capitol city, in which she sang the same tune as the ABA panelists.

She took the additional step of citing the CBO to the effect that CU tax exemption costs the federal government $2 billion a year in "lost revenue" and the state of Illinois $25 million. I don 't know what the state of Illinois's budget deficit is, but I do know that $2 billion in additional tax revenue is a drop from an eye dropper in a Pacific ocean of federal spending that, according to the Heritage Foundation, reached $3.6 trillion in 2012 and is expected to reach $5.5 trillion by 2022. To me, contributing such relatively small amounts to the black hole of government spending is an argument that lacks weight. I'd prefer that banks stick to the fact that if credit unions want to be "more like banks" (in other words, make commercial loans), they can pay the same freight that goes with that business model, including income taxes. You want to waddle, quack, and fly like a duck, but be pampered like a golden goose. Sorry, leveling the playing field on the powers side ought to come with a leveling of the playing field on the taxation side. Otherwise, you really are gaining an unfair competitive advantage.

The CEO of the Illinois Credit Union League, Dan Plauda, responded to Ms. Koch with the argument that tax revenues from credit unions in Illinois won't solve Illinois' revenue shortfalls. That's most likely very true. However, he also alleges that taxing credit unions will hurt their members, who rely on deposit rates that are much higher than banks pay and consumer loan rates that are much lower than those charged by banks. To me, that makes the banks' case, that tax exemption gives credit unions an unfair competitive advantage on the same deposits and loans that banks fight for. It seems to weaken the case for credit unions to intrude further into the commercial banks' sacred ground of commercial lending.

Mr. Plauda talks about how credit unions are member owned, "democratically controlled," and manned by volunteers. He also alleges that all "excess revenues" are plowed back into the credit union. By "excess revenues, he means what would otherwise be deemed "profits." I started out my career as a bank lawyer in-house for a large mutual savings bank. The only practical difference between a stock-owned commercial bank and a member-owned mutual is that, by soliciting proxies from members who don't give a rip about anything other than services and rates, management of a mutual is, in many cases, able to "rest easy" from all those pesky shareholders who demand the distribution of "profits" either in the form of higher stock prices, dividends, or both. At the same time, there's not exactly a lot of oversight on salaries and cash bonuses that are deducted from gross revenues before the "excess revenues" are calculated.

Mr. Plauda finished his piece with a flourish.

This “people helping people” approach to financial services helps explain why credit unions have become so popular in recent years. As new bank fees have proliferated, for instance, Americans have moved to credit unions in droves. Last year alone, credit unions nationwide added more than 2 million net new members — the biggest annual net member growth in 15 years.

Today, more than 96 million people belong to credit unions.

If anyone seriously thinks that folks flocked to credit unions because credit union members feel like they are part of a movement of "people helping people," as opposed to the financial incentives of lower loan rates and higher deposit rates, both possible because of CU's tax exempt status, that person needs a reality transplant. It just seems to me that responding to banks' call for the end of credit union tax exempt status by taunting banks with the line "we're stealing your customers by the boxcar-load" is going to make even the densest legislator wake up and smell the coffee, eventually.

Both sides of this debate need to sharpen their arguments. If they're able to do so, that is.

Thanks to a loyal reader from Illinois for links to the Illinois op-ed pieces