Bank Lawyer's Blog

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."

Interview With The Bank Lawyer

Crystal Gimesh, who, among her other duties, blogs for NContracts, a vendor management and contract management solutions company, asked to interview me for her blog. I assumed that she must be hard up for material, but she seemed like a very nice person, and wasn't threatening me with career-ending sanctions like certain other readers, so I agreed. The interview questions were some of the best I've experienced and I had a blast answering them. The best part? I can merely link to her interview post instead having to actually write my own post tonight.

Crystal: the beer's on me.

Time Out

Thankfully for me (and for the haters of this blog), I'm on vacation this week and intend to devote more attention to Jack Daniels Black, Hennesy XO, and the blackjack tables at The Bellagio, than to anything related to banks or to law. However, to send you off into the hiatus with a bang rather than a whimper, with the side benefit of irritating my progressive friends, I'll leave you with a link to a post from my friend Emily Zanotti Skyles' Naked DC blog about one of our favorite topics. Here's an excerpt:

Elizabeth Warren is for many things. Unrealistic bank prosecutions that the administration has no intention of following up on. State and Federal minimum wages that only large corporations can afford to pay, thus ensuring that Wal-Mart corners the market of unskilled laborers and college drop-outs. Expansion of collegiate affirmative action programs to include white females who claim to be Native American so as to take advantage of the increased hiring rates.

You get the drift.

Enjoy.

The Trendline

As community bankers and their running dog lackeys run pell-mell into a new year, dodging bricks thrown by bank bashers from many quarters of the peanut gallery, it's always good for them to keep in mind that they may soon be able to petition the EPA to add them to the endangered species list, right next to the Cloud Forest Rice Rat and the Pygmy Hog Sucking Louse. Why would community bankers merit such favored status? I'm glad you asked.

Since the mid-1980s there has been a tremendous consolidation in the U.S. banking industry.

The number of banks fell from 19,017 in 1984 to 7,357 in 2011, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. And the percentage of assets held by community banks fell from 38 percent to 14 percent.

In other words, the big banks got bigger.

The FDIC pays lip service to apple pie, motherhood, and community banks, by noting that the little guys supply a majority of bank branches in rural counties (20% of all US counties have only community bank offices), and that community banks make 46% of all loans to small businesses and farms. Nevertheless, don't put any serious money down on a bet that the incredibly shrinking small bank base will cause the FDIC to reverse its "unofficial" moratorium on de novo bank charters or to make it any easier for private equity "players" to make a difference by buying and recapitalizing community banks. The likelihood of the FDIC having an epiphany, slapping its forehead, and crying out "We were wrong about there being too many banks in this country; let us now help the banking biz be fruitful and multiply by granting a boatload of new bank charters, easing our foot off the regulatory burden accelerator, and generally worrying less about the tensile strength of the coverings of our own buttocks and more about the survival of little guys," is akin to the likelihood of Charlie Sheen joining The Monastery of Christ in the Desert or of Lindsay Lohan not busting parole.

Look at it this way: if the trend continues, community banks may be able to halt big bank expansion by arguing that any new big bank initiative requires a "community banking environmental impact statement."

Bankers: All Over It As It's All Over

We thought those wild and crazy Boomer Sooner Bankers had taken Gangnam Style banking to its outer limits. We were wrong.

It should come as no surprise that a tech-savvy bank from the Left Coast would be all over the latest fad, and would take the production values to Hollywood-style levels.

And yet, wouldn't you know it: just as bankers jump on the Gangnam style bandwagon, its originator decides that it's so, so yesterday, and that yesterday's gone (Gangnam style).

We Wish You A Merry [Fill In Blank]

It's Christmas week and many of my regular readers are spending time doing more useful things than reading this blog. Such as sleeping. Therefore, my blogging will be light-to-nonexistent until the new year. Before I slack off, however, I want to wish those of you who celebrate a religious holiday during this period a Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukkah, and for the nonbelievers, either a Joyous Festivus or the following politically correct, incredibly annoying, salutation, adapted from the Urban Dictionary:

Please accept my non-denominational holiday wishes with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2013, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere. Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wish.

She's Baaaaaack!!!!

In the aftermath of last month's stalemate at the polls, I pointed out one perverse bright spot: Lizzie Warren would be a member of the US Senate and, therefore, potential blog fodder. The announcement that she's achieved her deepest longing, and been appointed to the Banking Committee, not only sent  left-wing mouthpieces like David Lazerus into orgasmic ecstasy, they've guaranteed me at least four years of unrestrained whack-a-mole bliss. As one reader emailed me, the bankers thought they'd killed her off, but she's risen from the dead to eat their eyeballs and has, thus, become: "Zombie Lizzie." So, you see, "it's all good."

Speaking of "all good," I suppose most of you have seen by now the video of the Oklahoma bank employees who were "rewarded" by management for good behavior by being permitted to make a Gangnam Style music video. For those of you who've not yet seen it, here it is:

To me, this demonstrates conclusively that when you live in the buckle of the bible belt, you simply cannot "get jiggy with it" in convincing fashion. My props to the peeps for the effort, though.

Of course, it's tough for any bankers to compete with the Gangnam Styler-In-Chief.

More Mailbagging

A few recent emails are worth a comment (or three).

1.    A credit union trade official wrote to comment on my recent spate of blog posts regarding news reports about the brutally different results for robbers who pick on credit unions versus robbers who pick on banks. The latter are apt to be apprehended with their persons intact, while the former are apt to meet their maker, then meet his evil twin "Skippy" (aka "The Dark Price"). My correspondent intimated that I might be leaning toward the bankers on this matter, due to some sort of suppressed pacifist tendency that, if not nipped in the bud, might flower into a marijuana brownie-munching, Birkenstock-wearing meltdown. He thought I might soon be shouting "When guns are outlawed, only credit unions will have guns!"

Rest assured: I will never wear Birkenstocks.

2.    Last night's ramble regarding IndyMac officers who did not "beat the rap" prompted one financial institution attorney to wonder when the defendants would demand indemnification from New York Senator Charles "Chuckles" Schumer, and then answer his own question with "Oh wait, I forgot he doesn't have to answer for his actions . . ." A man after my own heart.

Long-time readers may recall my many potshots at that cretin esteemed member of the US Senate when his election year electioneering precipitated the run on IndyMac that forced the OTS to close it. Not that the OTS would not have had to close the steaming heap of goat custards that comprised IndyMac eventually, but that agency and the FDIC might have made a more orderly transition to oblivion than the lines-around-the-block debacle that Schumer's "leakage" precipitated. I reminded my correspondent that my original lambasting of Chuckie Cheese earned me a-whole-lotta-hate from leftards and moonbats, including one prominent, New Yawk City-based, bank-hating blogger who just about had to invent an entirely new language in order to articulate epithets vile enough to accurately describe my bovine nature. Man, that was a sweet memory!

3.    Finally, to the reporter who wrote to complain that she "didn't like me" because, in an off-the-cuff comment in a throwaway line in a blog post of over six months ago that was read by maybe three people (two of whom are related to me), I "twisted her words": please accept my most Grand Canyon-esque yawn of abject inertia. I deny that I twisted anything, least of all your words, but now that I know that I bug you without consciously attempting to do so, I'll be sure to not only twist your words, but your tail, whenever the opportunity presents itself. This is what happens to "one" when "one" takes "oneself" seriously, quite often by referring to "oneself" in the third person.

Keep those cards and letters coming kids. I don't have time to respond to them all, but I enjoy even the barking mad ones.

So Many Turkeys, So Little Gunpowder

I was going to post on a semi-serious topic, but since the day before Thanksgiving is generally a light day for pageviews, I thought I'd save it until after the holiday.

Instead, I'll just wish ya'll a Happy Bird Day!

The Day After

I'm a bit stretched for time, so I'll keep my immediate post-election screed brief. They'll be plenty of opportunity for bloviatory bombast and cheap shot artistry over the next four years, inasmuch as the agony of the last year of campaigning has left us on November 7th in pretty much the same screwed state of affairs we were in on June 6th.

Selfishly, I was cheered to see this morning that Princess Spouting Bull will be staking her Tipi on the same sacred soil on Capitol Hill that is very close to that soon to be vacated by Frodo Frank, the Hobbit from the same happy hunting grounds that Ms. Lizzie now calls "home" since her family fled The Nation lo these many moons ago. The bonus of forcing "Mr. Cosmo" to drive his dirty 4-by-4 back to the land of Birkenstock-wearing cod-crunchers only enhances the pristine beauty of the moment. The only thing that would make me even more energized for another four years of delivering fist-fulls of snark would be to see Sheila Bair running for any national office in 2014. ANY office.

Forget about repealing Dodd-Frank or any part of it. It's here to stay, and so is the CFPB. As to the latter, expect the jack-booted minions to pull out the spit shine and get down to the business of serious buffing and waxing. After spending all year wondering whether they might have to polish their resumes, they've got no less than two years of tenure and likely much, much, more. Like facing The Plague in the 13th Century, you can either bring out your dead each morning and try to survive until nightfall each day as best you can in a scary world, or you can just decide that those multiples of book are looking awfully good, as are the tax-free beaches in Belize, cash in your chips, and run for your ever-lovin' lives. As for me, I wouldn't miss this end game any more than I would have had I been a citizen of Rome in 44 B.C. and watched the Caesars and their rapacious soul mates take down the Republic. I figure we've got the rest of this century left to run on the fumes of a half-remembered (and quickly fading) past, and I'll be writhing in Purgatory by then (if I'm lucky). Until that time, it's going to be a hell of a show. Sorry about the kids, though.

A final, very preliminary thought: if any of you think the CFPB might be the poster child for potential regulatory abuse or high-handed legal thuggery, they simply haven't had the opportunity to gain traction yet. Sure, with time, they'll sharpen the long knives to a fine edge, but they're simply not there. No, for the near term, I'd watch the old pros in the federal financial institution regulatory agencies. My colleagues and I are seeing tactics we didn't even dream we'd see in the worst of the S&L meltdown of the late 1980s. More on that in the future, but for now, it's time to tend to the hangover.