The Whitlock Company, CPAs and Consultants, Springfield Missouri

Deferred tax assets on a bank’s balance sheets have always been a problem for regulators. Most of the deferred tax assets are currently disallowed for capital purposes. And now with banks piling up losses and creating deferred tax assets due to net operating loss carryovers regulators are taking a harder look at these assets. Writedowns of these assets are expected and will more likely hurt regional and community banks.

Nothing ever changes. Thomas Jefferson was criticizing big banks at the beginning of our history…

From the Daily Bail, a website devoted to bailout news, opinion and analysis:

Can We Party like it’s 1776 and Just Start Over? Thomas Jefferson’s Top 10 Quotes on Money and Banking

I found this list of problem banks published by www.calculatedriskblog.com. This list is sortable and even includes the type of Enforcement Action, the reason and the agency.

The American Bankers Association (ABA) and most bankers believe that the creation of a new regulatory agency to oversee consumer protection is a bad idea. The ABA on it’s website is “asking all bankers to contact their Members of Congress to let them know that creating creating a new consumer agency is not the solution. It would only complicate our existing regulatory structure by adding another layer of bureacuracy with no guarantee of better consumer protection.”

The FFIEC just issued Statement on Regulatory Conversions that will make it harder for financial institutions subject to enforcement actions to switch charters.

On May 6, 2009 public accounting firm, Grant Thorton sent a letter to Timothy Geithner, Ben Bernanke and Sheila Bair addressing bank capital requirements and the allowance for loan losses. I believe that this letter completely explains the auditor’s viewpoint on these two issues and offers the regulators a solution to protecting banks from future losses.

This issue is a lot like the Rocky movies. Just when you think it’s over they make another movie! Last week U.S. Comptroller of the Currency, John Dugan said that the accounting rules need to be changed to allow banks to reserve for future losses in the loan portfolio so that earnings would be less volatile. Didn’t we just spend the last 14 years hashing out this issue and finally eliminating any differences?

Oklahoma Bankers Association President and CEO Roger Beverage joined a conference call yesterday with FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair and expressed the views of Oklahoma bankers regarding the FDIC proposed special assessment. Here is an article the OBA published on March 2, 2009:

The Oklahoma Bankers Association posted an article on their website yesterday with the above headline. Fury is a good description of what I am hearing from community bankers throughout the Midwest.

At least 30 banks since 2000 have escaped federal regulatory action by walking away from their federal regulators and moving under state supervision, taking advantage of a long-standing system that allows banks to choose between federal and state oversight, according to a Washington Post review of government records.