Washington visit yields insight into financial crisis

By Nicole Lucht

Friday, Jan. 9, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Reporters gathered in December at American University in Washington to tackle how to cover the financial crisis, especially as a new administration readies to assume power.

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to take part in the seminar that included journalists from major business papers to local community newspapers as well as freelance reporters looking to improve their skills.

I’ve been covering the banking industry for almost a year and a half now, and the economic crisis that started about a year ago forced a crash course of the industry on me (I’ll admit I had no knowledge of the banking sector before picking up the beat).

At the seminar, there was interesting discussion on the Treasury Department’s handling of the bailout to keeping an eye on local banks’ financial statements.

At the start of the one-day seminar, sponsored by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism, a few D.C. reporters gave a rundown on national financial issues. They represented a business news wire, radio news and a quarterly covering Congress.

The consensus was the Treasury Department has no idea what it is doing in regard to the bailout plan.

Of course, that is obvious to many of us now. How many times has the plan changed?

Can anyone define, to a T, how the bailout works? Just consider the $250 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program, which doled out taxpayer money to banks with the intention banks would loan the money, but with few rules attached.

This wasn’t my first time visiting Washington as a reporter, although I have to admit going there as a journalist is much more thrilling than as a tourist or resident (I’ve been all).

While in town visiting family last fall, I took the opportunity to sit in on a news conference by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who took questions about the bailout from a throng of foreign and domestic reporters. My parents watched the conference on C-SPAN and proudly reported seeing my hand furiously scribbling away.

During the second half of the seminar, we broke up into groups to discuss how we, as reporters, would cover a bank in crisis. For many of the reporters there, they had never covered banking, let alone a bank potentially being seized by federal or state regulators.

In Las Vegas, we had already seen the federal and state seizures of First National Bank of Nevada and Silver State Bank, respectively.

But it was interesting to me that some of my peers, who knew little of the banking industry, would rush to announce a rumor that a bank was closing — if only to beat a competitor. Regulators are tight-lipped about what banks are in trouble, and until something is officially announced, you never know what’s going to happen.

Case in point: When Silver State was having trouble, and board members were jumping ship, I received a tip in August the bank was being shut down that night.

I put out calls but couldn’t confirm the tip. As it turned out, there was a last-ditch reorganization of the board that saw the chief executive being replaced.

In September I received another tip regarding Silver State’s demise, and this time it was right. But before I received word from regulators, all I could do was prepare the bank’s obituary.

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Wells Fargo has extended its Saturday hours at its stand-alone branches.

“Offering customers the ability to transact business when, where and how they want is a priority for us,” said Doris Charles, regional president of Wells Fargo in Southern Nevada.

In Nevada, Wells Fargo serves more than 400,000 consumer and businesses through more than 130 banking, mortgage and financial stores.

• • •

Community One Federal Credit Union is ramping up its services to better target Las Vegas’ Hispanic community.

“The Hispanic market has become an important demographic to Las Vegas and has been underserved for some time,” said Jerrold Rosen, vice president of marketing. “My marketing team is committed to provide a range of bilingual financial services and educational materials, whether we are contacted over the telephone, via our Web site or if someone enters one of our branches.”

The credit union has eight branches in Clark County. It serves 21,500 members and has $160 million in assets.

Nicole Lucht covers health care, workplace and banking issues for In Business Las Vegas and its sister publication, the Las Vegas Sun. She can be reached at 259-8832 or at [email protected].