PayThink

It was interesting, as a community banker, to read Mr. Kahr's (a big banker) piece about community banking. To assert that community banking is not in danger, in light of a decline in number of banks from over 16,000 to about 6,500 today is an exercise in absurdity.

One big thing we can say for Vikram Pandit is that he is not the son or grandson of a CEO of Citigroup. Many community bank CEOs can't say as much. High as my hopes are for Prince William, history tells us that heredity does not breed efficiency. Family businesses are bested by investor-owned businesses. Why should legislators and regulators favor community banks or treat them as an endangered species?

I am a board member of a mid-sized credit union with a net-worth ratio hovering between 7% and 8%. Our board is considering merging into a similarly sized credit union. When does it make sense to merge?

One thing all economists can agree on: interest rates have nowhere to go but up — it's when rates begin to rise that's still out for debate.

Not sure if you really need to be sitting down or taking sedatives when I reveal the findings of a recent study: tellers have an affect on how consumers feel about their financial institution. Who knew?

Rather than obsessing over servicing, why not focus on loan production, which is far easier to regulate and far more relevant to the future of banks and our economy? How about actually giving priority to avoidance of the next crisis, rather than maintaining a maudlin and unproductive emphasis on cleaning up the debris from the last one?

For the past decade, when not representing credit unions at the state capital in Harrisburg or providing various services to its multitude of small credit unions or dealing with all the pressures credit union associations face, employees of the Pennsylvania Credit Union Association have been cleaning up the highway at the interchange of Route 22-322 and Route 39, not far from its headquarters.

I strongly urge all credit union executives to support the corporate credit union model. Not recapitalizing corporate credit unions may be a long-term solution to a short-term problem. While our industry is growing, it is still a very small player in the financial landscape. We can't afford to become retail customers in a system controlled by our competition.

In comparing the ways that credit unions fund their benefit programs to the ways in which banks cover the same kinds of liabilities, a question arises: Are credit unions taking riskier positions than banks in funding employee and officer benefits costs?

In an effort to educate consumers about the act, it is recommended that credit unions and banks uniformly call the new fees the "Dodd-Frank" fees.