The past couple of weeks we have been concentrating on banks and credit unions that are struggling. Between that, and the new mega-merger announcement between BB&T and SunTrust (February 7th) that we will get into later, we thought this was…
Bankers Challenge Credit Union Buyouts
At first glance, a federally-insured credit union may not appear to be much different from a federally-insured bank. Both carry the same deposit guarantees, backed by the federal government and both often offer similar deposit and loan products. The primary…
Troubled Banks: The Long Goodbye
Even though there are fewer banks rated 2-Star or below than there have been since 2007, there are still too many (83 to be exact) to list on page 7. Instead we listed all banks rated 1-Star or Zero-Stars OR…
Wanted: New Community Banks
In spite of efforts to encourage more de novo bank applications, only seven new banks were chartered last year. In fact, to demonstrate how difficult the environment is… of the 70 banks that have been opened in the past ten…
Government Shutdown Trumps Economic Gains
The Federal Reserve’s Beige Book is a survey of opinions. While qualitative in nature, those surveyed do tend to have their fingers on the pulse of their part of the country. The latest Beige Book was based on information collected…
Consumer Debt: the Good, the Bad and the Scary
We promised last week that we would be paying close attention to consumer debt this year, and what better time to begin. The Federal Reserve conveniently just released its Consumer Credit statistics report for last November. This latest release shows…
2018: The Highlights and the Lowlights
Taking a look back at the year that just ended can sometimes give us a glimpse at what’s to come. We’re not sure that’s a good thing this time around but as they say, “forewarned is forearmed”. The first warnings…
Federal Reserve Bumps Up Rates
Happy New Year! The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee voted this week to increase the target Fed Funds rate by 25 basis points. This marks the ninth such increase since beginning the gradual rate rise campaign in December of 2015…
New Credit Union Star-Ratings This Week
New Credit Union Star-Ratings This Week Total assets at the nation’s federally-insured credit unions rose 5.6% ($77 billion) during the 12 months ended September 30, 2018 ending up at $1.44 trillion. The loan portion of those assets was up 9.5%…
Banks Get Bigger, Stronger… at a Price
Banks Get Bigger, Stronger… at a Price As promised, we have more details of third quarter bank data this week. We mentioned last week that total assets of $17.7 trillion were up 2.5% from a year earlier and the $10…