Bank of Granite Corp.'s streak of consecutive quarterly dividends has ended at 219.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City has ordered Hastings Bancorp Inc. in Nebraska to suspend dividend payments to preserve its capital, and not take on any more debt.

Integra Bank Corp. in Evansville, Ind., has struck a deal to sell three small Kentucky branches to Peoples Exchange Bank, a unit of Genbeach Co. Inc. in Beattyville, Ky.

Though its plan to get a capital infusion from Jay S. Sidhu fell through, Federal Trust Corp. has a new lifeline.

When I became the chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in 1981, the FDIC's financial statement showed a balance at the Treasury of $11 billion. I decided it would be a real treat to see all of that money, so I placed a call to Treasury Secretary Don Regan:

CBFH Inc. of Beaumont, Tex., has agreed to buy Crosby Bancshares.

How much relief community banks will get under the Treasury Department's proposal will hinge in many cases on how the government decides to deal with bad loans to home builders.

In a move that bank trade groups applauded, the Treasury Department said Sunday that its plan to guarantee money market mutual funds would cover only the amounts held in those funds at the close of business Friday.

Now that it is under regulatory orders to improve its capital ratios, BankUnited Financial Corp. in Coral Gables, Fla., plans to cut 12% of its staff, or about 160 employees.

Bank trade groups and some of their members reacted bitterly Friday to the Treasury Department's plan to guarantee money market mutual funds, expressing concern that it ultimately would do more to undermine than help the financial services industry.

Vineyard National Bancorp in Corona, Calif., has promoted vice chairman Glen C. Terry to president and chief executive officer and announced plans to raise $250 million in a private placement of common stock and convertible senior secured notes.

First Chester County Corp. in West Chester, Pa., said Friday that it has agreed to buy American Home Bank in Mountville for $18.2 million in cash and stock.

First Citizens National Bank in Mansfield, Pa., has a deal to buy an Elmira Savings Bank branch in its hometown.

MainSource Financial Group Inc.'s chief executive, Archie M. Brown Jr., was not with the Greensburg, Ind., company at the time it struck a deal for 1st Independence Financial Group Inc. of Kentucky, but it is up to him to make the combination work.

First Georgia Community Corp. in Jackson entered an agreement with the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and state regulators to maintain sufficient capital, improve its underwriting, and evaluate its management team.

As top officials at the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, and the nation's largest banks struggled last weekend to save the doomed Lehman Brothers and worried over a half-dozen other larger institutions that are so interconnected that world markets could be shocked and easily destabilized by their collapse, I was reminded of a passage from William Manchester's book on the Middle Ages, "A World Lit Only by Fire": "Even the wisest of them were at a hopeless disadvantage, for their only guide in sorting it all out — the only guide anyone ever has — was the past, and the precedents are worse than useless when facing something entirely new."

To the Editor:

Market turmoil cuts two ways for community banks.

Security Bank Corp. in Macon, Ga., said Wednesday that H. Averett "Rett" Walker has resigned as its president and chief executive and as a director of the $2.9 billion-asset company and its Security Bank.

MIDWEST