Playing the Game   By Chris Williston, IBAT President and CEO The Texas Independent Banker Volume XXXIV     No. 3     May/June 2008

My sisters would almost always pick Monopoly or Life.  I despised both of those games.  First, they both required a lot more patience and I never really understood moving top hats and spinning wheels around a board to acquire land or “experience” life’s ups and downs.  But more than that, I disliked the fact that somewhere along the journey you would inevitably be sent to jail or land on a square that would require you to return to where you started and begin the game all over again.

What is the point in that?  It would just be easier to quit than to start over, particularly when all the other players seemed so far ahead.

My Dad, the consummate optimist and life coach would counsel, “You just have to keep plugging along regardless of what the game throws at you.  Remember, you can’t win the game unless you play.”

I write this column as I sit staring out the airplane window.  Another trip destined for Washington, DC, the stage for the biggest game we will ever play.  It’s a stage where winners and losers are made every day and the stakes high.

I reflect on the myriad of issues and challenges we face as an industry, wondering once again whether our voices will be heard among all the noise, chatter and competing interests of all the players.

Some of the issues seem to never go away as new ones emerge.  This trip will be different in one way.  We will have more than one hundred voices to contribute to the chatter.  What will not be different is our need to prioritize and focus attention on the multitude of issues that seem to threaten our great industry…all with the potential of harmful and devastating consequences.

Should our message be on countering our government subsidized competitors like the credit unions and the farm credit banks, both on the verge of gaining expanded new powers that will make them all the more formidable?  Or do we focus our attention on combating the new Treasury proposal that will fundamentally change the banking regulatory structure as we know it?  What about the loophole in the law that Congress still needs to address to preserve the separation of banking and commerce and shut down the major retailers from obtaining industrial loan charters?

Or rather do we plead for regulatory relief for our community banks as we smother under a growing mountain of compliance paperwork?  Should we be concerned that we will be caught in the legislative crossfire of the subprime mortgage mess that we did nothing to create and be saddled with even more regulatory burden?  What about the future funding of the Small Business Administration and the ability of community banks to continue to make 7a and low documentation money available?

The fact is, all of these issues have the potential to forever change the landscape and the livelihood of many community banks depending on their geographic footprint or market focus.  And so we must and we will be pleading our case on all.

It really is no different than many of the childhood games we used to play.  This game never seems to end.  Move three spaces forward and then four back.  Sometimes you may even have to start all over.  Playing the federal legislative game does not allow one to become discouraged and frustrated to the point of throwing in the towel and not playing at all.

Remember, we can’t win if we don’t play the game.  Not playing just might mean there will be no game left at all.

Editor’s Note:  As this issue of the Texas Independent Banker is published, IBAT will have just completed its annual Washington, DC trip with more than 100 Texas community bankers in attendance.  Meetings will have been held with every member of the Texas Congressional delegation and other key Leadership lawmakers.  The game will continue long after everyone has returned home.