Bank Lawyer's Blog

One Big Happy Family

Bailout beneficiary Citigroup got a boost from its largest shareholder--the US Treasury Department--when Treasury recently voted its 27% ownership interest (the largest single shareholder block) to affirm the reappointment of KPMG as Citi's auditor. That makes it 41 years in a row that KPMG has been Citi's auditor and, given how swimmingly Citi performed throughout the lead-up to the 2008 banking meltdown and the government's bailout of Citi, who could possibly have wished to replace such a crackerjack auditing outfit?

Well, Francine McKenna might be one such person.

Maybe KPMG knows this client best – a dubious honor. KPMG has been on the scene of Citi’s crimes and misdemeanors all over the world for 41 years.

Maybe Treasury feels like a mother who puts up with a gold digging daughter-in-law because daughter-in-law saw mom kissing the tennis pro and mom knows her son has slept with the baby-sitter…

Ouch!

Francine's just warming up, though. She notes that KPMG's fees to Citi have been relatively flat from 2007-2009.

This seems quite odd given the tumultuous times we’ve had the last two years. Auditors are supposed to assess the additional risk of fraud and material misstatement associated with events like a global economic crisis, taking on taxpayers as significant shareholders (November 2008) and the credit chaos in industry and sovereign capital markets.

Although she can't prove it, Francine thinks that it's more than merely a coincidence that Treasury acquired a huge chunk of Citi's common stock in 2008 and in 2009 KPMG's fees went down.

While the US Treasury, via the IRS, was scaring the living daylights out of KPMG over tax shelter abuses in 2005 and the Department of Justice was considering indicting the firm, KPMG was busily auditing the Department of Justice and the US Mint.  In 2007 and 2008 KPMG also audited the Department of Treasury’s Financial Management Service.

Re: The Auditors, November 28, 2006:

KPMG is negotiating with the Department of Justice about its troubles while Department of Justice is negotiating with KPMG, their auditors, regarding their audits of DOJ financial statements… in addition to the “too few to fail” doctrine at work here, there was also an attitude on the part of KPMG of, “Hey DOJ losers, who are you to call us a mismanaged, uncontrolled mess?”

At the last moment, the Department of Justice changed their mind about putting KPMG effectively “out of business” over the tax shelter sins.

[...]

This decision cemented the US government and general global regulatory posture of  “too few to fail” with regard to the largest audit firms.  What makes you think the US Treasury would ever force its close friend KPMG out of Citi?

When you read posts such as Francine's, which focus on the incestuous relationships among Capitol Hill, Wall Street, and the large "service providers" who "service" both, you'd swear that you could hear you grey-haired granny, sitting in her rocking chair on her front porch, puffing on her corncob pipe, and declaring knowingly,"This is what happens when cousins marry."

In banking, on Wall Street, and, apparently, in auditing, it's good to be "too big to fail."

All Parties Agree: Mark Twain Was Right

Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. --- Mark Twain

Holy Cow! Stop The Presses!

At a time when the comments section to a National Public Radio "human intesrest" story about a pair of Millennials who feel entitled to walk away from their home loan not because they can't afford to pay it, but because the "investment" they made in the home isn't currently panning out the way they'd hoped, demonstrates the great moral divide between folks who think that because all banks are pure evil, two wrongs make a right, and those who think "strategic default" is a nickname of the fourth horseman of the Apocalypse, imagine how shocked we were to read that consumer advocates, banks, and bank regulators agree on anything, much less that all agree that part of the Dodd-Frank act "blows" (to use the proper legal terminology).

Banks and regulators are urging Congress to scale back a ban on the use of widely criticized credit raters to assess the risk of securities and investments on bank's books, at least until a better alternative is developed.

In a rare moment of agreement over the new U.S. financial reform law some consumer advocates say banks have a point.

[...]

The danger, they say, is that regulators will rely on otherwise untested tools when assessing the riskiness of banks.

More directly, industry officials argue banks may shy away from holding state and corporate debt because it would require too much work to prove to regulators that those investments are low risk.

The unfortunate roadblock for this consortium of critics is that the bovine bi-peds who ground out this piece of sausage came together with much bi-partisan zeal to jack, slice, dice, and julienne the credit rating agencies. Those were the same agencies that rated cow pies as caviar when it came to various forms of subprime mortgage-backed securities. They deserved a beating, and both political parties joined hands to kick them in the hind quarters. According to David Clarke of Reuters, that fact alone will make it tougher to get Congress to extend or narrow the ban on use of the agencies' ratings by banks. You understand the problem: once the herd of heifers starts stampeding in one direction it takes a heck of lot of cowboys riding very fast horses and firing very loud guns in their faces to get them to turn. Logical arguments are drowned out by all the panicked mooing.

Banks, bank regulators, and bank-bashers all agree that "over-reliance" on credit agency rating of securities proved to be a bad thing (especially since the agencies neglected to do their job). The rub is that none of these parties is certain what to use to replace those ratings. The Act leaves it up to the regulators to concoct a substitute and they're scratching their heads. Neither the banks nor any other interested party is of any help. Thus, rethinking the advisability of this particular portion of the financial reform legislation seems appropriate.

This is what you get when you pass a massive financial reform reform law of over 2300 pages in record time to prevent another financial crisis six months prior to the date when the commission that was established to determine the cause of the current crisis completes its work. The scholars at the Alfred E. Neuman School of Philosophy have worked their magic again in the hallowed halls of Congress.

As we work our way through the rest of Dodd-Frank over the coming months and years, expect hits like this one to keep on coming.

We Earn Money The Old-Fashioned Way: We Steal It

I'm not sure whether to be comforted or discouraged by the news that Interthink's Quarterly Fraud Risk Review Index shows that while mortgage fraud remains "substantially unchanged" last quarter when compared to the second quarter of this year (and is down from last year), the nature of the fraud has changed. In the recent past, much mortgage fraud was perpetrated by bad actors in the mortgage business, sometimes crooked brokers (mortgage and real estate), appraisers, investors, "straw men and women," and even (The Horror! The Horror!) lawyers, and sometimes by "professional crooks" who learned the fine art of mortgage fraud behind bars. In the third quarter of 2010, however, it appears we've returned to those days of yesteryear when men were men, women were women, and Johnny Cash was a boy named "Sue," days when most mortgage fraud was the act of a couple of people just trying to grab their little piece of the American Pie: Mr and Ms. Wanna-be Homeowner.

[T]he data analytics firm said emerging trends suggest a shift from fraud for profit to fraud for homeownership.

[...]

Interthinx tracks four type-specific fraud risk indices. The identity fraud and employment/income fraud risk indices both spiked in 3Q compared to a year ago, up 24% and 23%, respectively. This, Interthinx said, suggests an increase in "fraud for property," a fraud niche that has long been considered less dangerous than other types.

Fraud for property is essentially fraud to attain homeownership and is measured against "fraud for profit."

Of course, this return to the bad old days makes those of us who worry about "moral hazard" (i.e., me and three Franciscan monks in Butte, Montana) start to get a little queasy feeling in our stomachs and to hear the echos of the voice of Chaz Scuhumer bellowing about "liar loans."

"Since frauds for property sparked the mortgage meltdown as unqualified borrowers began to default in large numbers, it is clear that frauds for property must be identified and addressed going forward with the same urgency as frauds for profit," the report said.

Ya' think?

Perhaps this is yet another reason why applicants for home mortgages these days are being waterboarded, interrogated under Sodium Pentathol, and forced to pledge their small children (and/or household pets) as collateral before a lender will make them a mortgage loan. Maybe it's not all Fannie's and Freddie's fault after all.

Take A Load Off Fannie

Some lenders have taken to complaining that Uncle Freddie's and Aunt Fannie's penchant for loan buy-back demands has had a chilling effect on the ability of the average homeowner to take advantage of historically low interest rates by refinancing higher interest loans.

Lenders have responded to repurchase requests with more stringent background checks on borrowers, and tightening lending requirements even beyond what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac require.

The consequence of the "overlays" that banks put on lending requirements has been that fewer homeowners have been able to take advantage of record low interest rates and save money through refinancings, an important economic stimulus.

"Why are we having these overlays? Because we are having a fear of repurchasing these loans," said McCord, who said Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were essentially using taxpayer dollars to make cases for repurchase demands.

"We're trying to be out there lending to help this recovery," he added.

I've heard a couple of anecdotes recently that tend to support the complaint that qualifying for a home refinance loan is getting to be as difficult as finding an honest man or woman in Congress. A former hedge fund manager told me that he was so exasperated with the constant "come-back" requests for more and more documentation and verifications that he finally told the lender (who had the existing loan that he'd applied to refinance) that he'd just "pay the damn existing loan off" (since he had the liquid assets to do so many times over and was borrowing for tax reasons). A partner in a national law firm told the attendees at a recent conference I attended that she was required to produce more paper by her lender than she thinks she's cranked out in decades as a deal attorney (which is usually enough to depopulate a redwood forrest). Of course, both these high-income, high-net-worth individuals eventually were approved for the loans they requested, but if they are being run around in circles by loan underwriters, you can imagine how difficult things are for Joe and Jane Sixpack.

I'm sure that Fannie's and Freddie's push for buybacks based upon whatever technical reasons they can find after scouring loan files plays some part in this. However, if the linked article's allegation that standards have tightened beyond those required by Fannie and Freddie is correct, then something more is at work here. Certainly, lawsuits by holders of CDOs and other securities ultimately backed by less-than-stellar mortgages add to the caution by originators. Overall, however, I think that this is a classic example of the same type of pendulum swinging that we see in reaction to every banking crisis. The last time around, lenders also tightened their lending standards (primarily for commercial, not residential, real estate loans, in that case). The regulators are also tightening the screws on many banks in order to fight the last war and to make certain that no one can ever blame them for not being conservative enough as to underwriting standards. Nevertheless, even without those factors, the pendulum always swings from the too lenient side to the too restrictive side following a bubble burst. It's like fine-tuning your shower in the morning: first too cold, then too hot, then too cold, then too hot, until you finally reach a happy, tepid medium. While they're not blameless, Fannie and Freddie shouldn't take all of the blame, or even most of it.

Moreover, this, too, shall pass. It may take a little while, but in the not-too-distant future, rest assured that somebody, somewhere, will be making loans again to borrowers who haven't got a snowball's chance ih Gehenna of paying them back. You just have to be patient enough to wait for the pendulum to reach its apogee and start back down the curve.

 UPDATED: 10/27/10: Rewritten to correct typos. Sorry, but I'm getting used to the new Typepad interface and screwed up the "spell-check" run on this one the first time through.

 

Lawyers: Social Media Killers?

One of the sessions I attended at last week's BAI Retail Delivery conference in Las Vegas was entitled "Using Social Media to Understand Your Brand," and was given by Brad Smallwood, the Director of Pricing and Analytics for Facebook, and Jesse Goranson of The Nielson Company. It was a worthwhile session, even (or perhaps, especially) for a lawyer who doesn't drill down as much on the marketing aspects of social media as on the legal issues. During the Q&A session toward the end of the program, a bank officer stood before a microphone and asked the panelists in a quasi-exasperated, quasi-pleading tone, "How does a bank dive into social media marketing when everything has to be run by legal?" There were murmurs of sympathy throughout the crowd, evidencing that the general pain-in-the-kiester view of lawyers by bankers is still strongly held by bankers. The panelists were unable to answer the question directly, other than to suggest that unless the bank changes its culture, social media marketing may be a non-starter.

I wanted to jump up and suggest a few things, but restrictions on solicitation and the fact that it wasn't my seminar made me wisely restrain myself. On the other hand, nothing restrains me from providing a few educational tips on this blog.

Since most banks that use social media do so in order to engage their customers and potential customers in "conversations," it won't work if everytime the bank opens its mouth to speak, some pinstriped pinhead has to bless the bank's end of the conversation in advance. Instead, I'd suggest that legal risks to the bank can be effectively mitigated without lawyers "killing the conversation."

Although reasonable people (and unreasonable people like me) may differ on which factors of risk-mitigation in social media marketing by banks are the most important, I'd suggest two critical techniques of risk mitigation: (1) having the "right people" supervise and participate in the bank's social media forums, and (2) the bank having in place the right "legal infrastructure" for the social media it sponsors.

As to people, I think that the best defintion I've heard of the ideal person to run a social media effort is a "marketing technologist." Unfortunately, I can't recall who coined that term, but it indicates a person who understands how to effectively market or "brand" the bank and also understands the special strengths and weaknesses of the social media being used to do the "branding." It's not purely a "marketing" department function nor purely an "IT" function. It's two [click]...two [click]...two functions in one.

Inasmuch as the bank's personnel who participate in social media are going to be engaging all kinds of people in conversations, including not only people as nice as your grey-headed grandma, but also tin-foil hat wearers and professional jerks, it helps to have a thick hide. In my experience, it's also true that in this arena, nice guys finish first. The same traits that make a great customer service representative often make a great social media representative. In other words, a guy like me is the last person on Earth you'd want to handle your social media "interface" with customers.

As to "infracstructure," that involves having in place the right internal policies and procedures and external "terms of use," "terms of service," "rules of the road," disclaimers, warnings, and other "documentation" that is drafted or at least "vetted" by the bank's lawyers. It also involves (a) training employees who will participate in social media as to what they can and cannot say and do; (b) periodic monitoring (by management and legal) of both sides of the "conversation" to detect any deviation from the rules that govern employees and customers use of the social media; and (c) fair and consistent enforcement of the rules. "Infrastructure" is where the lawyers can play a role in "teeing up" social media without "gumming up" or slowing down the conversations, except on those (hopefully) rare occasions where the conversation starts to present undue risk to the bank.

There are common sense ways to approach these issues, and lawyers can be facilitators rather than conversation killers. Obviously, "everything has to be run through legal" won't work if applied strictly. On the other hand, "anything goes" presents unacceptable risks to the bank. Finding a happy medium is not all that difficult if both the bankers and the lawyers involved understand social media.

Bank Back From The Brink By Making Nice

A year ago, Sterling Savings Bank of Spokane, Washington was in dire straights. According to a recent Bank Safety and Soundness Reporter article (paid subscription required), in October 2009, it was hit "with a harsh 11-page Cease and Desist order, which gave the bank about two months to raise $300 million in capital."

Regulators also demanded increased board oversight, a fully-funded ALLL, a decrease in nonperforming assets, a 3-year strategic plan and a plan to merge or sell if the capital raise couldn’t go through.

[...]

The situation became so dire that Sterling’s independent public accounting firm expressed “substantial doubt” about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.

Yet, by August of this year, the bank had raised $730 million in new capital and in September, the FDIC lifted the C&D. With so many other community banks in a similar situation failing to exit the death spiral, how did Sterling resurrect itself in less than twelve months?

According to Greg Sielby, the CEO of the bank and its holding company, the bank's board and senior management proved to be "good listeners." They "listened carefully to what the regulators from the state, the FDIC and the Federal Reserve all had to say.  'Understand the pressures on them. Do your best to establish a spirit of collaboration and cooperation. Had we not done that, I think our situation might have ended quite differently,' he notes." Sielby states that the bank held regular meetings or conference calls with all three regulators, keeping them apprised of the bank's progress. I assume that bank management also sought verbal and visual clues as to how their regulators were reacting to the bank's presentations. Head-nodding: "good." Eye-rolling: "bad."

I don't think any experienced bank advisor wouldn't emphasize the critical importance of reacting quickly to an enforcement action. Too often, boards and management facing these situations act as deer caught in the headlights. If they do, they'll go down just as certainly as do the deer.

Fast action on changing senior management also can be especially important for independent board members who might not be getting "the straight skinny" from the same senior management that guided the ship into the iceberg. It's not often that such management officials quickly offer to fall their swords, yet because time deadlines set in enforcement ordfers are usually quite short, every day wasted is a day closer to the edge of the cliff. This is why many board members insist on separate legal representation for the independent board members when the bad stuff hits the fan. Hard decisions may have to be made, and made quickly, that are in the best interests of the insitution but not in the best interests of current senior management.

Although not discussed in the article, I assume that Mr. Sielby, who joined the bank in 2007, came into the bank after the problem assets were already booked, or was in area of the bank that was not responsible for the bank's problems. He was elevated to the CEO's role after the C&D was issued. Therefore, he (and other senior management he brought in) must have possessed two important qualities: (1) regulatory credibility and (2) turnaround skills. Both new investors and regulators have to have confidence in the new management team or it will never get off the ground.

Some of the other salient points raised by Mr. Sielby:

• New management was "honest," "critical," and "transparent" in analyzing the assets and financial condition of the bank. With no vested intertest in covering their own backsides, they concentrated on trying to determine the "depth of the hole" the bank had dug itself into. Investors aren't going to dump in capital unless they know what their downside risk and that the management team in place is both honest as to the current financial condition and capable of working the bank out of the hole.
• Prioritize the problems. Sielby's team "identified four critical areas to focus on: liquidity, de-risking the balance sheet, raising capital and making sure that the regulators 'had a view that we would find a partner.' " In other words, "do first things first." Rearranging the deck chairs is  an endemic problem at many banks that ultimately sink.
• Be realistic, yet optimistic. You need to rally the troops and instill confidence in capital sources and regulators. Of course, honesty and competence are important in this respect, but never underestimate the importance of essential leadership qualities.
• Be "patient and persistent," even in the face of daunting challenges. The bank adopted a Churchill quote ("Never, Never Quit") as its moto, and it appears to have worked.

Good observations.

With so many sad endings to these stories (seven more last Friday bringing the 2010 total to 138), it's nice to read happy one.

Parting Shot

I'm at the BAI Retail Delivery conference this week, so blogging for this week will be severely curtailed. However, I wanted to make sure you didn't miss the in-depth post by Kevin Sullivan at Anti-Money Laundering Training Academy blog for his hard-hitting exposé of the latest Vatican bank money laundering scandal entitiled "...And Then He Created the Moon and the SARS." As only an ex-cop (Kevin's the New York State Police official who first pursued the SAR that brought down Eliot Spitzer) and fellow Irish Catholic boy can, he puts that kerfuffle in proper perspective.

This has all the makings of a Dan Brown novel. Angels and Dollars? The Da Vinci Load? The Cash Symbol? Somebody stop me…!

You gotta love his picture, too:

Small Biz Lending Law A Bust?

According to a recent American Banker article (paid subscription required), it looks like the $30 billion small business lending law enacted by Congress may be cocered with the same patina that slimed TARP.

So far, the response among bankers has been lackluster at best. Some said they can't get past the bitter memory of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and have no interest in doing business with the government again — especially so soon after the Tarp experience.

"It's like all their programs," said Thomas O'Brien, the president and chief executive of State Bank of Long Island in Jericho, N.Y. "They're just subject to change and revision, and someday they'll turn around and attack or revile their participants, and I don't think any of us want to go through that anymore."

[...]

Mike Menzies, president of the $161.5 million-asset Easton Bank and Trust in Maryland and a past chairman of the Independent Community Bankers of America, said his bank is considering applying for the funds. He said the program could be a valuable tool to help the smallest banks preserve capital so they're prepared to lend once loan demand returns.

But he acknowledged that many bankers worry about how they might be viewed if they accept the capital.

"I think that there is an inherent dislike of the notion that the media could paint the small-business loan fund as a form of a bailout," he said.

Michael Clarke, CEO of the $789.2 million-asset Access National Bank in Reston, Va., said he has no doubt that the program will increase the volume of small-business lending. But he is not sure his bank should be involved.

"We're still evaluating it," Clarke said, "because if you are unable to reach the thresholds of volume, then this capital will prove to be costly. We don't want to find ourselves in a trap where we almost feel obligated or forced to make loans that we otherwise wouldn't, just to meet the objectives of the program."

[...]

The $2.8 billion-asset Bank of the Ozarks in Little Rock received $75 million in Tarp funds in December 2008, and repaid the investment in November 2009. George Gleason, the CEO, said the company has zero interest in more capital from the Treasury Department.

"I don't even know if we're eligible for it," Gleason said. "We haven't looked at it, and the reason is very simple: We're going to make every good loan that we can make, with or without the fund. So we're not going to mess with a government program."

It's good to know that many community bankers (a) learned the lessons of the recent past so readily and (b) aren't masochists. However, one group of bankers is likely to be much more receptive: those already dangling on TARP's hook.

That's because the law allows some banks that received funds through Tarp's Capital Purchase Program to refinance into the Small Business Lending Fund, where they have the chance to pay much lower dividends on the capital, said Joseph Longino, a principal in the investment strategy group at Sandler O'Neill & Partners LP.

Under Tarp, banks pay the Treasury Department a 5% dividend, and that will rise to 9% in 2013.

Through the new fund, banks with less than $10 billion of assets can apply for capital with an initial dividend payment of 5%, which could drop to as low as 1% for a few years as banks boost their lending.

"I think smaller banks that are laboring under Tarp and that believe … that there are small-business lending opportunities out there that they could tap — and therefore get the lower rate — are going to be the most interested in this program," Longino said.

There are no warrants this time around, either, so it's got that going for it.

Nevertheless, this doesn't seem to be something that is going to make the "splash" that TARP made. For that, thank (1) Members of Congress for changing the rules after the program was enacted and pontificating about how "bailed out" banks weren't lending; (2) articles in the main stream press that painted all banks that particpated in the "big bank" and "small bank" versions of TARP with the same broad brush; and (3) banks that didn't take TARP using that fact as a marketing ploy against those that did.

To me, the fact that the final bill didn't contain commercial real estate loss amortization provisions that were inserted in the initial House-passed version made it an exercise in futility for most community banks. As I noted previously, most of them who need the additional capital won't likely qualify for it. At this point, it appears that even those banks that would qualify for it aren't particularly interested in getting it. One more election year exercise in futility.

Bank Fees: Not As Bad As You Might Think

You wouldn't known it by reading the main stream media, which feasts on sad tales of consumers being gouged by evil banks at every turn (some of which are, indeed, sad tales), but as Fierce Spirits points out, a recent ABA survey found that 53% of customers pay no fees on their bank accounts, while another 14% pay $3 or less a month in fees. It's inconvenient when the facts get in the way of rip-roaring prejudices, but there you have it.

It doesn't lessen the irritation at the overdraft fee kerfluffle, but its always useful to put things in perspective. Big banks may be hosing (or "justifiably charging," depending upon your viewpoint) a minority of customers with beaucoup fees, but most customers seem to be managing their accounts without paying much (if anything).

The blog's author lists the follow "common sense" methods suggested by the ABA for keeping your fees low:

• Free Checking and Savings Accounts – Most banks offer them.
• ATM Machines – Avoid fees by using your own bank’s ATM.
• Direct Deposit – Many checking accounts are free when your paycheck is automatically deposited each month.
• Minimum Balance – Keep at least the minimum balance in your account.
• Don’t Overdraw – Keep track of transactions and account balances to avoid bounced check fees.
• Email or Text Alerts – Ask for an automatic alert when your balance falls below a certain level.

Don't Cry For Me OCC

Tell me you're surprised by this (paid subscription required)and I'll call you a fibber.

The merger of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Office of Thrift Supervision is shaping up to be the match made in regulatory hell.

Three months after the regulatory reform bill ordered the OTS' elimination over the next year, efforts to bring the agency into the OCC fold have been plagued with bitterness, communication problems, unease on job placement and rampant conflicts. The latter range from the important to inane, covering everything from job titles to claims of unreturned phone calls to bickering over the placement of booths at an upcoming industry conference.

The fights go all the way to the top, with several sources suggesting acting OTS Director John Bowman is openly hostile to the merger and accusing him of being uncooperative.

"It's a little like the Middle East — the feud goes back so far it's hard to determine who threw the first stone." said Kip Weissman, a partner at Luse Gorman. "Both sides need to grow up a little bit and stop the personal attacks — there are plenty of difficult technical issues which need to be resolved."

If you think that's bad, just imagine what it would have been like if the FDIC and not the OCC had been the agency into which the OTS was being merged. After the enactment of FIRREA, which made the FDIC the successor to the dissolved Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (run by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board) and the FDIC-staffed RTC the successor to the assets of the insolvent thrifts that were disposed of post-FIRREA, the FDIC folks came in like Hawkeye and Trapper John burst into that hospital in Japan in M*A*S*H screaming they were the pros from Dover (*see below). The FSLIC Titanic was a ship of fools, and now that it had sunk, the FDIC was going to "crack this kid's chest and get out to the golf course before it gets dark." Arrogance doesn't even begin to describe the attitude, and hard feelings were the result.

Still...

While ABA COO Diane Casey-Landry does a politically correct job of soft-pedaling the dust-up by calling it the result of the "natural tension that comes with mergers," there's a whiff of thumb-sucking and tantrum-throwing in the air. You'd think that an agency that was declared a useless tool on national television by the likes of Chuck Schumer over twenty years ago, and the abolition of which opponents have been calling since it was created in 1989 would be expecting its luck to run out some day. Those of us in the world of private enterprise who've worked for business entities that have been merged out of existence are expected to suck it up and transfer to Plan B in our career track. It's called taking it like an adult and moving on.

Guess these folks are getting a taste of what the employees at Charter Bank, BankUnited, IndyMac, Wamu, and so many other savings institutions that have been consigned to thrift hell by the OTS have had to eat. Bitter, isn't it?

Hey, OCC: How do you want your steak cooked?

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