Further commentary in Wednesday Journal on FBOP’s shutdown by FDIC and subsequent acquisition by US Bank:
Banks are judged both by the soundness of their banking decisions and by their impact on communities. They are not just fly-by-night visitors; they are also crucial institutions.
So FBOP, parent of Park National, deserves to stay open because it made more loans to low-income people, argue Bill Barclay & Peg Strobel, ignoring the non-sustainability of Park N’s policy, which endangered depositors’ money, FDIC claimed.
Park N got praise from B&S and others, but FDIC is in the business of protecting depositors’ money, and it’s a good thing too, because if it didn’t, there would be no loans to anybody, including low-income people. Judged by whom? is the pertinent question.
Otherwise, what is for them “the larger, crucial issue,” the doling of TARP money is unwisely kept from small banks in favor of ones too big to fail. I’m with them on pursuit of that issue, indeed of the TARP concept in itself — TARP having become arguably a slush fund which Obama wants to use to goose the economy, so much of it is left over.
Can o’ worms here, folks. Let’s open it.
Blithe Spirit 