Small bankers receive mixed messages
TEXT OF STORY
Bill Radke: You’ll remember last week, President Obama met with the CEOs of America’s largest banks. Called them fat cats. Today, he meets with the little guys — a dozen community bankers will troop to the White House. Marketplace’s Nancy Marshall Genzer tells us the president’s expected to echo what he told the big banks: Make more loans.
Nancy Marshall Genzer: The White House wants to create more jobs. Small businesses are normally big job generators, but they say they can’t get loans, so can’t hire anyone. Normally, community banks make a lot of those loans, but they say bank regulators are telling them to tighten up their lending standards.
Camden Fine heads the Independent Community Bankers of America:
Camden Fine: The administration and Congress are saying lend, lend, lend, and the bank examination forces are saying conserve, conserve, conserve.
Fine says the community bankers will tell President Obama to rein in the regulators.
Bill Black is an economist at the University of Missouri. He says President Obama can’t do that.
Bill Black: Is he going to tell the regulators, back off, go back to being, you know, the morons that helped to allow this crisis to occur? He can’t say those things out loud.
Bank examiners show no signs of letting up. They shut down seven banks just last week.
In Washington, I’m Nancy Marshall Genzer for Marketplace.
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