“Commonsense, Senator Kassebaum and Mikki Bowman~ From Lending Officer at Farmers and Drovers Bank, Council Grove, Kansas to Vice-Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors”
Dear Bank of Prairie Village Shareholders and Clients ~
Most recently, I had the chance to briefly go back to Washington, DC. Such visits generally bring back a host of Capitol Hill and political memories.
For that reason, it is hard to go back to Capitol Hill. Too many memories, both good and bad.
By all accounts, Capitol Hill has changed so dramatically in the 30 plus years since I left, I know my positions and our strategies no longer exist. In another life I was the General Counsel and Legislative Director to U.S. Senator Nancy Landon Kassebaum, a moderate and most popular Senator from Kansas.
I believe she was elected for her third term by 80 percent of the popular vote. I also think she spent less than $90,000 on that campaign. (Today, I am not sure you can be elected to the Prairie Village City Council for less than $90,000.)
Not having to spend time worrying about or raising campaign money allowed Senator Kassebaum’s staff to focus more on constituent services and legislative initiatives. Further, we did not feel beholden to big campaign contributors or industry representatives, in part because we had no need for big campaign contributors. It was a healthy sense of liberation.
This freedom from campaign contributions, enabled the Senator’s policy staff to look at legislative proposals rather clear-eyed~ as to how they could impact the Country as a whole and the State of Kansas.
Legislative analysis memorandums for the Senator were drafted more or less like legal decisions weighing the pros and cons of each issue. Final recommendations were made in the closing paragraphs. Such memorandums were shared with the rest of the interested senior staff.
After the office closed at 6pm, nightly the Senator would come from her office to the Senior Staff office. We informally gathered chairs in a circle.
As all the other staff members reviewed, the memorandum’s various points and conclusions were discussed. (In some ways I felt like we were gathered at a kitchen table like any other Kansas family discussing what we should do.)
In the end, Senator Kassebaum took in the conversation, asked tough questions and made a final decision as to how she wanted to proceed.
On more than one occasion, I had written a detailed summary legislative recommendation, only to have the other staff and/or the Senator, suggest either an alternative approach or the direct opposite approach to what I recommended.
To my surprise, once the Senator had given her clear directive as to how to proceed, it never bothered me that it could be the opposite of what I recommended.
I simply went to work drafting the floor speech as to why the rest of the Senate should view the bill as Senator Kassebaum did. (In fact, I worked harder on those speeches as I had to challenge myself to understand her thought process and why she disagreed with my initial recommendation.)
Reflecting on those occasions, I realize most of the time the Senator or other Senior staffer overruled my recommendation occurred when I cited too many specific expert facts, academic opinions, or industry studies and analysis.
In short, the times I tried to use “expert logic” as to why the Senator should adopt my legislative recommendation is generally when I was overruled.
Thinking back further to the Senior staff meetings and the Senator’s final decision, she would push back on my “expert analysis” on the basis, the expert conclusions I cited I made did not pass her “Common Sense scrutiny”.
She was never overwhelmed or overly impressed with all the expert testimony, industry white papers, academic opinions or big law firm analysis of the pending legislation. By not being overly impressed or overwhelmed, she could look through all the material I presented and understand why the “expert analysis” may have been slanted to one industry position or another. (I always thought this was her gift.)
Once she pointed out why the experts were skewed, it was easy to review the legislation on its commonsense merits and not be swayed by which industry had the best or most expensive so-called experts. Often, the experts, (including the supposedly nonpartisan) academics, were so narrowly focused on articulating on behalf of one side or the other of an issue, they either inadvertently or intentionally missed the big picture.
The Senate Banking Committee on which she served and on which I was her primary staffer seemed most susceptible to industry basis. The Big New York Banks, which were perpetually getting themselves into hot financial trouble, always had armies of “experts” explaining why it really was not these bankers’ fault their lending standards became sloppy or why their capital was never at the proper level.
Perhaps the Senate Banking Committee, was susceptible to “expert basis” as twice a year then Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, would testify, in such a convoluted fashion and in such high academic tones, no one could figure out what he said, let alone what he really meant.
Nevertheless, we generally took everything Chairman Greenspan supposedly said, as gospel, given he had hundreds of prestigious economic doctorates working under him.
Without question, Chairman Greenspan, and the country’s ten largest banks had a symbiotic relationship. He protected them. When necessary, he bailed them out.
Correspondingly, the Big New York Banks kept publishing studies articulating the brilliance of Chairman Greenspan. The usual solution to every New York Big Banking problem seemed to be more deregulation and new products for the Big New York Banks to offer. (Each proposal for additional powers and products carrying evermore risk.)
Having left Capitol Hill to run a small, single location, community bank, I frequently find myself tearing hair out as to some new banking regulation put in place because some top ten Big NY Bank greedily abused the regulatory system. The New York Bankers seem nefariously very adept at abusing the system in ways, I cannot even fathom ~let alone contemplate implementing.
That said, because of our wonderful clients and the daily reward of making them straightforward ~ having to live under the whole litany of Big New York Bank oriented regulations, is the price even the smallest community banker must pay to stay in the community banking game. It is hard, but the reward and satisfaction of working with clients outweighs the needless regulatory headaches.
My cynical view of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, changed drastically on September 18th, when I watched Chairman Jerome Powell install Mikki Bowman as the newest Vice-Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. As Vice-Chair, Mikki Bowman is responsible for the Federal Reserve’s Bank Supervision.
Vice-Chair Bowman is not the typical Federal Reserve Governor and especially not the Vice-Chair. She was a loan officer at her family’s fifth generation bank in Council Grove, Kansas.
In her acceptance speech Vice-Chair Bowman 1) explained their family bank was named the Farmers and Drovers Bank established in 1880, and 2) “A ‘Drover’ is a person who drives cows!”
Vice-Chair Bowman further explained how she loved sitting across from a bank client discussing loaning money for them to buy fertilizers and seeds for the planting season, as well as cattle for the herd. She also commented on the joys of working with young families to build or buy their first homes.
You could have heard a pin drop among all the economists in the room. I am sure none have ever made a loan in their lives. They have no idea what it takes to lend money on cattle or crops, or even how one goes about lending money to build a farmhouse. (Further, I am very confident none of them knew what a “Drover” does!)
I was momentarily shocked.
I thought of all those Senate Banking Committee hearings on Capitol Hill with those armies of economists and regulators. I could never imagine back then a small Kansas bank lending officer would ever be nominated to the highest levels of the Federal Reserve and in charge of regulatory supervision. The idea would be simply too commonsense logical to be politically acceptable for the Washington insiders.
Think of it. Not some inside academic or economist, as is the normal procedure~ but someone who actually operated in the space they are to regulate, being placed in charge of regulation! Someone who knows how to make a loan and has looked into the eyes of the borrower to whom she lent the money! Simply unheard of in Clubby Washington.
What a commonsense approach!!
It is like making sure and requiring a high-flying restauranteur/celebrity chef knows how to cook a hard-boiled egg before putting him or her in charge of a big restaurant chain. So straightforward, one does not even suggest it!
Listening to Mikki Bowman’s acceptance speech reminded me that common sense is the most valuable commodity in politics.
I felt rejuvenated leaving Mikki Bowman’s installation. For the first time in 30 plus years, I experience the same exhilaration I felt when Senator Kassebaum would cut through all my “expert analysis” and make her legislative decisions based on sound, Kansas-grounded, commonsense.
I had a goofy, happy grin in the taxicab all the way back to the airport and then on the plane ride home. I was leaving Washington, thinking about how commonsense once again prevailed.
As we head into the Fall Season, let us remember all the wonders of this brilliant Autumn foliage. Let’s also reflect on the power of commons sense in tackling all our challenges.
Dan Bolen ~ Chairman
Bank of Prairie Village
“The Bank of Prairie Village ~ Home of Blue Lion Banking” ~ cited March 2020, April 2021, April 2022, April 2023 and April 2024 by the by the Kansas City Business Journal as one of the “Safest Banks in Kansas City for Your Money.”
Small Batch Banking ~ Once Client at a Time.
