Minnesota Bank Asks Why It Pays for Wall Street Greed

Republicans try to claim government laws "forced" banks to make sub-prime loans. Not so.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=anmrn4H8hXfw&refer=home

By Linda Shen

March 6 (Bloomberg) -- TCF Financial Corp., the Wayzata, Minnesota-based bank that never made a subprime loan and hasn’t lost money since 1995, is asking why it should help clean up the mess made by Wall Street.

“I’m kind of bitter,” said William Cooper, chief executive officer of the 448-branch bank, adding that over the years TCF has invested about $1 billion in the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s fund that guarantees bank deposits. “We pay for the excesses of our competitor over and over again.”
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“A number of members have been concerned about the increased assessment that’s hit community banks from the FDIC in part because of failures to which they did not contribute,” Frank said yesterday on the House floor.
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TCF never “securitized anything, we never engaged in any of those unscrupulous activities,” said Cooper, 65. The bank pays a 25-cent quarterly dividend and applied to return $361.2 million in U.S. funds.