BankThink

Dick Johnson, the former head of Western Bridge Corporate FCU, writes in to sing the praises of a successor, Phil Perkins.

The perfect metaphor for the housing crisis sits, ignominiously, off the coast of Italy. That lumbering hulk of a ship – the once Grand Concordia — is stuck, half sunk, going nowhere, and the prospects for the situation improving are problematic at best. Refloat? Scrap? Maritime experts are weighing the pros and cons, but I think there's general agreement about siphoning off the fuel before a possible leak turns pristine waters into a very toxic mess.

As the Transaction Account Guarantee program is such an important issue to community banks, I read with interest Ms. Barbara Rehm's column titled "Rehm on TAG: Don't Extend it, End it." The piece omitted discussion of the reasons the TAG was created by the FDIC in the first place and why those reasons are still valid today.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Woeful Results in Europe: Considerable attention was paid to Europe's biggest banking companies, which reported sizable quarterly and full-year losses in recent days as they continue to struggle with their exposures to sovereign debt and grapple with the potential fall out from another Greek bail out. Weighed down by exposures to Greek government debt and other impaired assets, Royal Bank of Scotland, Crédit Agricole and Dexia reported quarterly losses. The Financial Times made a video to cover the results. RBS however touted its progress in purging bad assets.

The sovereign debt crisis affects all of us, whether we're managing risk at a trillion-dollar bank in North America or at Main Street Bank in Small Town, USA. Even if we don't have customers overseas, our customers at home may be affected either directly or indirectly by events on the other side of the Atlantic.

Reading "Capital One Is Nearly Unscathed in Deal Victory" reminded me of watching ING Direct CEO Arkadi Kuhlmann address a major banking conference several years ago. He presented a detailed description of his unconventional approach to consumer banking and explained how each facet contributed to the success of the initiative.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Hold it, They've Got Ideas: A funny thing happened on the way to the Republican presidential debate last night - a candidate actually made a policy proposal. Before all the name-calling, piling on the front-runner du jour and renewed etymological analysis of the word "conservative," Mitt Romney offered a plan to cut personal income taxes on the same day President Obama proposed to cut the corporate tax rate (more on that in a moment). But the Romney tax plan hardly came up in the debate, the Journal reports. In fact, the economy took a backseat to social issues and the latest round of posturing among the candidates vying for the GOP nomination, the Times says.

Like the mast of a sailing ship coming over the horizon, the first sign that Congress may restructure Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has appeared.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Like A Marine: Let's begin today with a treatise on morals involving two of the business media's favorite topics: Greece and the U.S. housing market. As the New York Times notes, contract issues are at the forefront of both.

In a perfect world, state attorneys general and the U.S. Department of Justice would have worked hand in hand with bank regulators to fix foreclosure wrongs. But that's not how the world works.