Since the Great Recession, you loaded our surviving local banks with more regulation even though they had nothing to do with the excesses of those 10 largest banks who put our economy in peril. These local banks have the burden of responding to myriad community needs and they don’t have a bottomless pit of cash.
Why are you harming my community?
By Tim Coco
President and chief executive officer
Why are you harming my community?
My city was never one of the rich ones, but it was proud, content and turned out citizens with a high work ethic.
Local people toiled diligently for local manufacturers and merchants and once earned reasonable wages. Yet, they still had enough time to raise families and volunteer to service clubs and civic organizations. Local incomes were also enough to fuel dozens of mom and pop shops, mutual banks and service firms.
Time and again citizens of this community honored the call to serve their country, shared with neighbors in need and still maintained reasonable savings. They could count on a high quality public education, a job for life and the promise the next generation would be better still.
They were not too big to fail. In fact, our city’s history is filled with stories of those who failed, but tried again and went on to achieve great success. When they succeeded, thankfully, they shared their good fortunes by building libraries, hospitals and institutions of higher learning.
Today, most of those local institutions are gone and the mean age of civic and charitable volunteers is past retirement age. This is hardly surprising when wages haven’t kept pace with inflation for the last 30 years and younger families are time-starved working more hours to make ends meet.
Despite your best efforts, such as the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994, there are still a couple of local banks left. Before the Riegle-Neal Act, there were more than 12,500 banks and the 10 largest held 20 percent of financial assets. Now, there are 8,000 banks scattered across the country and the 10 largest hold 54 percent of assets.
Worse, since the Great Recession, you loaded our surviving local banks with more regulation even though they had nothing to do with the excesses of those 10 largest who put our economy in peril. These local banks have the burden of responding to myriad community needs and they don’t have a bottomless pit of cash.
What were you thinking when you passed Free Trade Agreements? These have taken away millions of jobs and given greater rise to the big box stores that neither pay decent wages nor substantially contribute to local causes.
There was a time when companies could own only seven AM, seven FM and seven television stations. You, however, removed the caps in 1996—turning hundreds of locally oriented stations into national repeaters, while taking away local jobs and choice.
There was also a time when Congress demanded national loyalty, but now encourages giant corporations to send jobs overseas, avoid taxation and treat citizens poorly.
Ingeniously, you have deflected criticism by convincing citizens to fight among themselves for limited resources, while much of the nation’s wealth sits in offshore bank accounts.
The nation’s founders began the Constitution with the words, “We the people.” Of course, they meant natural human beings and not multinational corporations.
You can still reverse some of the damage by amending the constitution to rid us of the scourge of Citizens United, demanding renegotiation of free trade agreements, breaking up the too big to fail banks, loosening restrictions on local banks, strengthening antitrust rules, extending corporate fiduciary responsibility to the country as well as shareholders and lending to students at the same rate as banks. These measures would be a good start.
My community and hundreds of others are counting on you to do the right thing.
To learn how COCO+CO.’s blue chip Connections Process can help your business grow, call 800.374.4103 or 978.374-1900 or use the contact form.
Client Spotlight
Haverhill Bank uniquely understands residents are best served by a local institution. After obtaining permission from Haverhill’s favorite son, Tom Bergeron, Haverhill Bank commissioned COCO+CO. to design a giant outdoor billboard that now appears on Route 125 in Bradford. To learn more about Haverhill Bank, visit www.haverhillbank.com.