Updated: Feds seize Santa Fe bank

Federal bank regulators don't look at moral character when they order banks to cease and desist from loaning money they don't have. They look at assets vs. liabilities. If you read NSA agent Bob Quick's apology in the SFNM, you almost certainly would have gotten the impression this bank was above reproach except for maybe some muddy shoeprints on their doormat during a recent rainstorm. What this town needs is real reporters working for real news organizations run by somebody whose interest in the news goes beyond their political preferences or the fact that their daddy happened to own a newspaper.

Here's the Nov. 2009 order:

http://files.ots.treas.gov/enforcement/97262.pdf

There are like other docs in that case file if a reporter could be bothered to go to the federal court site and look them up.

Here's what qUick wrote in the SFNM:

"Following what appeared to be some problems with its commercial-loan portfolio, at least in the eyes of federal regulators, Charter Bank Santa Fe received an order to 'cease and desist' from certain practices from the Office of Thrift Supervision.
Banks around the country have faced or are experiencing similar OTS demands following the collapse of many financial institutions because of the credit crunch last year."

Were he writing about a bank robbery using that approach, he might have written "A man who attempted to make a withdrawal from the local bank was accused of robbery, at least in the eyes of bank officials."

Quick's run-on sentence isn't even coherent: "an order to "cease and desist" from certain practices from the Office of Thrift Supervision."

Doesn't he mean to say "received from the Office of Thrift Supervision an order to cease and desist" And why the scare quotes bobby? It is an order to cease and desist, period.

Too bad federal regulators can't shut down newspapers for not having enough intellectual equity to back up their words. Soon enough that empty rag will fall on its own.

I read about this in the paper and it left me wondering just why this happened. They had a tiny default rate, they were forced by the Fed to increase their cash collateral which they did, but then did not have enough "reserves."

I find it a bit odd, seems like a set-up. The owners financed a lot of "low income projects" and were big philanthropists.

Is there anything more? They don't seem like bad people or bad operators.

I almost corrected this article when I first saw it, but I was trying not to be an a$$. :)

The Feds shut down Charter Bank of Santa Fe, a few branches of which were in Abq. Assets and operation of the failed bank have been assumed by Charter Bank of Abq, a different entity that happens to have a similar name, which is a subsidiary of a bank holding company out of TX.

$200 million? Look at the positive side, the government gets a bank complete with customers, not exactly at a bargain-basement price.

Last night Michael Savage spent an entire hour blaming Bill Clinton for the banking crisis like we see here. He must have conveniently forgotten the string of "S&L failures" of the late 1980s. Unless Clinton superhumanly reached backwards in time to cause those failures, supreme being that he was.

Unfortunately, fixing the problem is going to take twice as much energy as Reagan's deregulation, it is the law of the Entropic Universe. It is always easier to let everything go to hell.