by Rick Lowe
It's long, but, Robert G. Wilmers, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of M & T Bank has a lot of sensible things to say in his remarks to the annual meeting of shareholders.
Thanks to a friend in the banking industry that sent it along.
Here's a brief excerpt that struck a chord with me:
The examples I have cited raise a broader and extremely important issue that has seldom been raised in our current dialogue about the financial crisis—the role of lobbying expenses and campaign contributions. One has to wonder why the 10 largest recipients of TARP funds felt the need to spend $82.4 million on lobbying expenses and campaign contributions in 2008. Does this money improve the banking system on which millions of businesses and citizens rely? Or was it even motivated by philosophical purposes, to improve the quality of life in the United States?
Someone has to say it: this sort of behavior is just plain wrong. Corporate leaders have an obligation to set the right tone—a moral tone—lest public confidence in our private enterprise system erode. The management of large banks should be paid to manage the banks—not to take entrepreneurial risks with insured deposits, nor to try to change the rules of the game to favor their own companies. The average bank does not have the same access to the government as the oligopoly of banks which spends so much on lobbying and political contributions—such that they confirm the worst fears of Thomas Jefferson, who wrote, to his Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin, in 1802, that “our banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.”
Download a PDF of the speech here...
So who is M & T Bank? Visit their web site here...
