The True "Main Street" Lender

In the May 25, 2010 Wall Street Journal article, Obama Urges Congress on Small-Business Proposal, we see the role of "Main Street" clearly coming to the forefront of the economic recovery. Until now the media has focused its attention on big banks and their performance. Who hasn't read in the news the implications that bailout moneys are being used as the means or the justifications to continue Wall Street compensation practices?

In my eyes the true "Main Street" lender is the local community bank. For the past 10 years, I worked with this market and I see local bankers as struggling with balancing community welfare with profit, not just concerned with the bottom line. I have seen bank presidents trying to do the right thing and depending on the integrity of the borrower. One small community bank president once told me, "I don't have any loan problems; you would have to have a lot of guts to stop paying me and still show up at the diner or the hardware store." That's the guy I want in charge of the recovery...and we don't have to pay him millions to do his job.