Comptroller, Comptroller Über Alles

As the OCC fires up its Tigers and Panzers, as its Stukas scream earthward issuing the whistle from hell that precedes the impact of its dive-bombing preemption opinions, as the sweet sound of an erupting blitzkrieg of expansion of national banking power shatters the stillness of a dawn rising over a benign land of honest real estate brokers and unbiased NAR lobbyists slumbering peacefully beneath the soft, warm quilts of their multi-list monopoly, let us pause and burn September 15, 2006 searingly into our cerebral cortexes where it will live forever in our DNA as the day the music died: the day the OCC finally launched total warfare against Middle Earth, and every other corner of Earth, while they were at it. The day those jackbooted minions of the Comptroller issued "A Letter Too Far."

As war corespondent Stacy Kaper reported from the front lines in Washington for The American Banker last Friday (paid subscription required):

A deal to let a national bank lease land to retail businesses is raising new questions about whether the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is again moving the line on permissible banking activities.

The agency released a letter this week allowing an unspecified bank to lease half its property to a third-party developer for 40 years in exchange for the building of a branch and parking lot at no cost to the bank. The Sept. 15 letter said that the developer planned to use the remaining space for retail businesses.

The OCC characterized the approval as "nothing new" - the same position it has taken on other controversial bank approvals - noting that banks routinely lease space to other businesses. But observers and critics said the deal raises several questions, including why an interpretive letter was necessary if the lease was routine and whether it is appropriate for a developer to build a branch for the bank in return for the lease.

Let's review: a bank owns land free and clear, has an obsolete branch building that needs to be completely replaced, and instead of funding the cost of construction of a new branch building itself, it cleverly structures a deal whereby it receives (A) a new bank branch building without any cost to the bank, (B) monetization of the real estate through the vehicle of a ground lease, (C) construction of improved parking for bank customers and, (D) on the 50% of the property that is now vacant, construction of a retail strip center that will both enhance the market value of the real estate and drive more potential customers to the branch. The fiends!!! This...is...simply...DI-A-BOL-I-CAL!!!!!!!

From behind the concertina wire of their fortified stockade "somewhere high in the Rocky Mountains," NAR rebel spokesmen were quick to respond.

The National Association of Realtors, which has criticized the OCC's past three approvals as blurring the line between banking and commerce, wasted little time in condemning the agency's latest move.

"It's just stretching the law, and it's another baby step toward national banks' expanding their powers that really weren't given to them by Congress," Thomas Stevens, the trade group's president, said in an interview.

The OCC is "stretching the powers to mix banking and commerce, banking and real estate - real estate development - which the law basically says you shouldn't mix," he said.

"By 'baby' I mean Baby Huey," Stevens bellowed. He then screamed "INCOMING!", hit the deck, rolled to his back, and fired his tommy gun wildly into the blazing sun of a bright blue sky until his drum was empty, at which point our faithful (but not foolhardy) correspondent beat a hasty retreat. As her fuel-efficient Toyota Prius "sped" away down the twisting, rock-strewn logging trail, she distinctly heard Thompson shouting "Wolverines! Wolverines!"

OCC Information Minister Kevin "Goebbels" Mukri scoffed at such allegations.

[Goebbels] said the lease arrangement was standard except for a "very slight wrinkle" that lets the developer build the branch. He also contrasted it with other recent approvals by OCC.

"They are keeping ownership of the land, and they are leasing out the right to build on that property and as part of that lease," he said.

Anonymous sources report that, out-of-earshot of reporters, Mukri turned to an aide and whispered savagely, "NAR must be obliterated. Do it, dummköpfe. Schnell!"

Bert Ely, a former ally of the OCC in its long, and ultimately successful, campaign to destroy the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and its former Reichfurher Danny Wall in the 1980s, but now a gadfly-in-exile who turned against the OCC for reasons that remain clouded in mystery but apparently have something to do with a tin foil hat and a silver tooth filling that picked up radio waves from the  frozen space rock formerly known as the planet "Pluto," jumped all over the blatant hypocrisy of the OCC's contention that this transaction was "business as usual" while issuing an interpretive opinion letter on the matter.

"Banks have been leasing out space in their buildings for as long as there have been banks," said Bert Ely, an independent consultant in Virginia. "I don't know why they would feel the need to have a letter on this."

You can see the unassailable logic of Mr. Ely's thought process:

They didn't need to issue an opinion.
They issued an opinion.
Therefore, something's rotten in Denmark.

"Not so," insisted Goebbels Mukri.

Mr. Mukri said the OCC released the letter because it knew the issue was getting publicity.

"This is like going the extra mile to ensure that people know that we are being transparent," he said.

Mukri, not realizing his microphone was still live, then sneered, "Ely! That name is not Aryan. What is it, Slavic?"

Strangely, no one involved mentioned another possibility. The OCC doesn't issue interpretive letters unless it's requested to do so. Do you think that a bank and/or its counsel, out of an excess of caution as a result of the controversy surrounding national banks and real estate development mixed together, might have actually requested such a letter? Hmmmmm? Might that explain the "nefarious" reason that the OCC issued such a letter?

You'd think that, perhaps, if you were a naive, foolish little girly man. Real men understand that the OCC knows only one imperative: conquer or decay. Responding to its innate drive to dominate, it uses any justification, no matter how seemingly innocuous, as a weapon to extend its rule, like the expanding universe itself, into the very nanospace between every subatomic particle presently occupied by any enterprise that is not currently controlled by its evil essence.

Today, real estate.

Tomorrow, Krispy Kreme.

The day-after-tomorrow? To even consider it will compel your mind to launch itself into the black abyss of utter nihilism and despair from which no freedom-loving human being has ever emerged with his or her sanity intact.

Below is rare footage of Kevin Mukri's address to adoring OCC stormtroopers employees at a recent OCC "retreat" (ironically named) in Branson, Missouri. His speech, "Totaler Krieg," was interrupted frequently by spontaneous enthusiastic applause from the enthralled masses. Also included are shots of Comptroller Dugan (sporting a nifty little mustache) meeting and greeting the faithful, as well as scenes showing the results of the "debate" with NAR engendered by the OCC's most recent interpretive letters. Real estate seems to be the issue, and the OCC seems to be acquiring it.

Comments

[mobile notary]

The National Association of Realtors is a very powerful organization. They seem to have been pretty active lately, especially as discount firms and a number of internet startups (redfin, zillow) seem to be challenging their traditional ways of selling homes.

[Kevin]

NAR fears the OCC as baloney fears the grinder. Every interpretive letter is cause for riots in the streets and calls for jiahd.