Bankers To Obama: Stop Trashing Us

by Victoria McGrane February 27th, 2009 - Politico

In his unofficial State of the Union address Tuesday night, Barack Obama said that it's "unpopular ... to be seen as helping banks right now, especially when everyone is suffering in part from their bad decisions."

In a letter to the White House, ABA CEO Edward Yingling says bankers across the country were "disappointed and concerned" with rhetoric like that.

"Mr. President, of the over 8,000 banks in this country, very few ever made a single subprime loan, and they did not engage in the highly leveraged activities that brought down Wall Street firms," Yingling said.

A serious part of the confusion that has left so many Americas deluded about who is to blame for our current crisis is not understanding the difference between what have come to be called "investment banks" (actually stock brokers) versus traditional banks. Though it is sad so few Americans understand the difference, it is cataclysmic that our President is ignorant of the difference.