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Editorial: Payday Loan Bill Eliminates Options
Posted on February 20th, 2010 No commentsProposed Wisconsin legislation that would cap payday loan interest rates and limit loan amounts “will not eliminate the financial need that still exists,” the Milwaukee Courier editor writes in an online editorial. “Instead of eliminating options, legislators should find a way to open up the door for more options. If the banks are threatened by this, then begin offering something better.”
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Column: Help Small Biz, Banks By Helping SBA
Posted on February 19th, 2010 No comments“We should offer smaller banks the additional capital they need to expand their small business lending,” writes Karen Mills, administrator of the Small Business Administration, in a Green Bay Press-Gazette guest column, detailing ways that SBA programs could stimulate the economy.
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Letter: Use TARP Funds as Intended
Posted on February 6th, 2010 No comments“President Obama has proposed that the government take $30 billion in repayments from the Toxic Asset Relief Program and distribute it to banks for small business loans. While there may be a legitimate need, this would be contrary to the law as written,” reads a letter to the editor in the Wausau Daily Herald.
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Editorial: Impose Fees on Big Banks
Posted on January 28th, 2010 No commentsPresident Obama’s proposed Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee, which would tax about 50 of the nation’s biggest banks $9 billion a year over a decade, is “sound economic policy, because it will discourage bad behavior by those who were guilty of atrocious judgment in the years leading up to the collapse of the credit system,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writes in an editiorial.
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Editorial: Don’t Blame Community Banks
Posted on January 17th, 2010 No comments“Wisconsin’s community banks are stable members of their communities; they continue to finance businesses; and they’ve not gotten caught up in the financial gizmos created by the too-big-to-fail investment banks. So, they ask, why are we suffering for the sins of the Wall Street bankers and others whose credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations and other risky behavior brought us to the brink of economic collapse? It’s a fair question,” writes the La Crosse Tribune in an editorial. Read more.
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Opinion: Card Fees Hard on Wis. Businesses
Posted on November 28th, 2009 No commentsMany Wisconsin legislators and residents have recently pondered why so many of the states businesses were closing up shop. We can suggest one thing that certainly isnt helping businesses keep the doors open and the lights on: credit card transaction fees, writes a group of several retailer trade associations in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
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Cap Times: ‘Too big to fail? Break ‘em up’
Posted on September 30th, 2009 No commentsThe Madison-based Center for Media and Democracy recently gave its first-ever “Golden Throne Award” to the president and CEO of the American Bankers Association, Edward Yingling. “The Golden Throne, you see, is more like a that-really-takes-a-lot-of-chutzpah award — as in the big bankers nearly bankrupting the American economy and now spending big bucks lobbying to convince Congress that it shouldn’t enact tighter regulation,” writes Dave Zwiefel of The Capital Times.
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A New Generation of Bank Haters
Posted on August 9th, 2009 No commentsI’m trying to determine if the dislike of big bankers [during the Great Depression] was any worse than it is today, writes Dave Zwiefel in The Capital Times. From what I’ve read, the bankers whose establishments crashed and burned during the 1930s may have been a little more chastened and even humbled by the financial meltdown they helped create.