Where Have You Gone, George Bailey?
Crumbling under the weight of oppressive Dodd-Frank regulations, small community banks are being absorbed by “too big to fail” banks, as Washington favors Wall Street over Main Street.
He is America’s most iconic banker. Okay. He isn’t a real banker, but we all know and love him; he’s George Bailey from the quintessential Christmas movie It’s a Wonderful Life. Bailey, the local banker from Bedford Falls, N.Y., confronts slumlord and all-around bad guy Henry Potter for control of his father’s bank, Bailey Building and Loan. Potter tries to bribe Bailey, then tries to steal the bank from the young idealist and businessman. It was a movie, and it was the 1940s, so the good guy won. George Bailey got the bank and the girl, and the bad guy lost, humiliated and shamed by a public that hated him.
Today, thousands of George Baileys around the country—men and women who run community banks—are battling a new and more insipid villain: their own government. And they are losing.
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