WASHINGTON — Regulators often spend a majority of their public speeches talking what their agency is doing.
But Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Martin Gruenberg accidentally took the entire allotted time for a speech on Friday to talk about his personal life growing up in the Bronx.
Speaking to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, Gruenberg recalled his first internship helping his local congressman write speeches on a piece of legislation that became known as the Community Reinvestment Act. The internship eventually led to a full-time job where Gruenberg also worked with local community development groups.
"I tell you, I've never had a better job in my career and I've never had one that I learned more from" in those two and a half years, he said.
Gruenberg said CRA was a "critical element" in the "extraordinary" development that had occurred in the Bronx during the last 30 years.
"If it can be done in the Bronx, I think it's fair to say it can be done anywhere," Gruenberg said in closing before opening the room to questions.
A few minutes into his response to the first question, Gruenberg realized he did not list off the FDIC's agenda from his prepared remarks and stopped to say: "I wanted to talk a little about the work the FDIC done. And I'll just pretend I got a question on that."
Gruenberg went back to his prepared remarks to talk about the agency's efforts to help the unbanked and underbanked, encourage small-dollar loans and safe mobile banking.
"Deposit insurance is about making people feel secure about putting their money in a bank …the fact is, there are large portions of our population in this country that either have no access to an insured financial institution" or limited access, he said. "One thing I feel strongly about is that this should be a significant priority for us because it is so much a part of why the FDIC exists."
