Icon of agricultural banking dies

Frank Bruning, chairman emeritus of Bruning State Bank in Bruning, Neb., died June 1 after a fall at his home. Bruning began his life’s work in 1964, working in the bank his grandfather helped launch in the late 1800s. The bank was then called The German Bank, a nod to the family’s ancestry. The family changed the name of the bank to Bruning State Bank after World War I.  [Continue]

Let’s fight the good fight together

Bank building photo

We know you are now working long and hard to help the economy recover; you are fighting for businesses across your communities to survive. We’re here to cheer you on, to share ideas, to inform and inspire, to get you thinking about new ways to solve age-old problems. [Continue]

Six feet of separation scraps interactions, postpones shows

By March 31, three out of four Americans worked from home. Bank lobbies were locked, phone lines redirected, video chats had replaced corridor confabs. All for the greater good, the public health professionals had said, and hadn’t most of us quickly assented? [Continue]

Economics goes primetime as Fed builds its bridge to recovery

With consumer spending amounting to 70 percent of domestic economic activity, lagging confidence ripples to negative effect. Perhaps this explains why, on March 26, as millions filed for unemployment, and as a handful of Senators debated how much relief jobless Americans needed (or deserved), Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell did the unexpected. He went mainstream.  [Continue]

The new challenge testing our preparedness

What we didn’t expect when we put our April architecture issue together was that in the week-long stretch between going into production and sending the issue to the printer, we’d all become bit players in an unfolding calamity of a different sort: The coronavirus pandemic. [Continue]

Independent bankers have fighter at the wheel in Noah Wilcox

Noah Wilcox has had it up to his ears with the gloom-and-doom attitude that community bankers are unable to compete against the largest financial institutions. “I’ve heard it for a long time,” said Wilcox, chair, president and CEO of Grand Rapids State Bank, Grand Rapids, Minn., and chair/CEO of its sibling, Minnesota Lakes Bank, Delano. [Continue]

Community banks operate against the tide of bad behavior

If you don’t believe we live in an angry, cynical world, wade on over to Twitter for a half an hour and drill down on the discourse. Yikes. A person who shares an innocuous opinion can, within minutes, find dozens have hacked their ideas into bloody chunks. [Continue]

Kashkari wants bold response to protect economy

“Overreaction” is exactly the response the federal government and the Federal Reserve needs to adopt to combat the negative economic impact of the COVID-19 contagion, said Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, in a televised interview March 22. Reflecting on the Fed’s response to the 2008 economic collapse, Kashkari said “we … Read more