Bankers Form SuperPac for ‘Surgical’ Strike at Industry’s Enemies
Frustrated by a lack of political power and fed up with blindly donating to politicians who consistently vote against the industry’s interests, a handful of leaders are determined to shake things up.
They have formed the industry’s first SuperPAC — dubbed Friends of Traditional Banking — that is designed to target the industry’s enemies and support its friends in Congress.
“It comes back to the old philosophy of walking softly and carrying a big stick,” says Howard Headlee, the president and chief executive officer of the Utah Bankers Association. “But we’ve got no big stick. And we should. We have the capacity to have one, we just aren’t organized.”
Think of it as an Emily’s List for bankers and their allies.
“Congress isn’t afraid of bankers,” adds Roger Beverage, the president and CEO of the Oklahoma Bankers Association. “They don’t think we’ll do anything to kick them out of office. We are trying to change that perception.”
Unlike traditional banking PACs, which target hundreds of House and Senate races, the SuperPAC instead is focusing on making a big difference in just a handful of close elections.
Rest here…
And don’t forget to contribute to Lisa Epstein’s campaign for Palm Beach County Clerk of Court here…
~
I don’t like Super PACs at all. However, if this group truly represents the small-town George Bailey type banker against the Too Big To Fail Potter style banker, it might be a good thing. I’ve made the switch to a healthy SOLVENT local community bank and I couldn’t be happier. I would support anyone who supports the local bankers who do things right like not securitizing loans, not participating in MERS, not drug-money laundering, not nickle-and-diming their customers to death with junk fees, not playing account manipulation games with debits and credits (hoping to unjustly enrich themselves), not participating in fraudclosure because they did their due diligence when making the loan and they also personally address and make an attempt to resolve borrower problems. Yes, I love my ‘little’ bank!
This Super-PAC is NOT being formed by the ‘little-guy’ banks and credit unions. Far from it, this is being formed by the usual offenders.
I’d love to see an organization that would only represent interests of the true home-town banks and financial institutions. It would have to exclude membership by the offenders and that would probably be attacked. Then the offender banksters would try to take over control of this group’s PAC.
I think the door is opened for law suits against these big corporations, because in the day you could nout sue a corporation, because they were not a “PERSON”. I was reading this about 10 years ago.
I hope I’m not just dreaming but this could just get members of congress upset enough to do something about the vote by the Supreme Court that has allowed the banksters to have these huge PACS. Allowing corporations to be treated as a ‘person’ needs to be stopped.
The banksters may just drive that point home with sufficient numbers within congress to finally have a bill passed that would limit the PACs.
The time has come and then some!