After TCF Financial CEO Bill Cooper's Sunday night speech excoriating regulators, Congressmen, MBAs, borrowers and, yes, some bankers, as catalysts for the collapse of banking and the global economy, attendees at American Banker's Best Practices in Retail Financial Services Symposium found it refreshing to hear U.S. Bancorp Vice Chairman Richard Hartnack take personal blame for the financial crisis on Monday morning. (Just after he said, "Neener, neener, I told you so!)
Hartnack, who heads consumer banking at U.S. Bancorp, recalled a speech he gave at BAI´s Retail Delivery conference in late 2006 in which he urged the industry to put a stop to the interest-only, pick-a-payment and negative amortization mortgages that were rampant in banks other than his.
"But we didn´t because none of us-and I really fault myself for this-none of us saw this coming," he said. "We all had the belief that this was going to be self correcting, that these guys would drive their cars off the cliff...and figured this is all going to work out okay. What we didn´t realize is they were digging a hole under the entire global economy. None of us saw how big this mess was going to be."
But Hartnack seemed to be only half kidding when he asked the assembled bankers to raise their right hands and take the following pledge: "I promise to blow the whistle on the biggest idiot in town from now on."
"I´ve lost enough money that I´m not putting up with the village idiot anymore," Hartnack says. "My personal goal is to call them out. I´m not going to let this go on again."
And, too good to leave out:
"And people ask me about the stress test, how´s it working? It´s working fine, we´re all really stressed."
and...
"If anybody asks I´m not here and I didn´t have a good time."
