I spent the first seven years of my grade-school life with Daniel (last name withheld). Well, I didn’t spend time with him in a literal sense as Daniel was one of those who just wanted to keep to himself. But he was a classmate of mine at St. Louis Catholic School.
Daniel would sit in the back of the classroom staring out the window, his eyes rolling back in his head most of the time as if he could care less about the subject matter or anything for that matter. And yet, when test time came around, Daniel would ace everything.
Forget about going outside for recess or lunch. Daniel was staying glued to his desk to consume lunch as he would often tell us that bad things could happen to us if we were to venture outside. It was almost as if Daniel believed the sky would somehow fall, or that disaster was always inevitable.
I have often wondered what happened to him, but now I think I know.
Listen to the media today and they would have you believe that our country is headed for economic disaster. The subprime mortgage mess, coupled with the sluggish Christmas holiday retail numbers, and now an emergency stimulus package by the federal government has most believing that there is doom and gloom on the horizon which will likely lead to a credit crunch, the likes of which we have never seen. The media is doing its dead level best to create doubt and despair. And unfortunately, sometimes perception leads to reality.
Texas community bankers don’t believe it for a minute. Having just completed our 15 city regional meeting road show which drew a record number (1500) of banker and industry vendor partners, there is a sense of optimism about the industry and our Texas economy. Absolutely there is concern about shrinking margins, unfair competition, and deposit growth and funding, but that has not dampened the spirits of the overwhelming majority of IBAT members.
When asked via computerized polling which provided instant feedback to us as to how they would describe the state of their local economy, 69 percent described it as good to vibrant and dynamic. Less than 1 percent responded that their local economy was poor and headed for recession.
Community bankers also expressed similar optimism relative to the expectation for bank earnings in 2008. Seventy-five percent expected return on assets to be equal to or greater than 2007 earnings.
We need to go out and tell our story and share our optimism about the Texas economy and that community bankers are not only alive and well but ready, willing and eager to do business. This is a wonderful opportunity to separate ourselves from the problems of the large money center and regional banks and their subsidiaries as they wallow in the problems of their aggressive lending practices. What are you doing to tell your story locally? You can count on IBAT to be spreading the word with an assortment of positive press releases and Op-Ed submissions to major State newspapers.
I was convinced that Daniel must be a reporter or a television economic correspondent or something given all the negative prognostications and paranoia we are reading and hearing about our great State. But then, he would have to go outside to actually take a look at what was going on and see for himself the sky is not falling. And I know he would never do that.
It makes me wonder if anyone ever does.
By the way, the author has located the whereabouts of Daniel. He is a forecaster in the National Hurricane Center.
