Why you should care about bank charters
“A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong.” – Hannah Arendt ||
Hello everyone! I hope you’re all well. Madrid is in full “local fiestas” mode – this week is San Cayetano, and downtown is festooned with banners, flowers and other colourful decorations. There’s free lemonade being handed out, open-air concerts, religious processions, street stands selling beer and grilled meat sandwiches… Yet another reason why I love staying put in Madrid in summer. I’ll be posting some pictures on Substack Notes and X.
Apologies for the late send today – I fell down a rabbit hole, more below.
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Why you should care about bank charters
Term of the day: OCC
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Why you should care about bank charters
Here’s something people don’t usually tell you about being an analyst: it’s often hard to rein in where your interest takes you. This is one of the aspects I most love – you’re constantly scratching the itch of discovery, and you end up learning the darndest things. It’s also occasionally a handicap, as in hours later you’re wading through turn-of-the-century treatises about Italian shipping, when you should have been diving into the ECB’s disjointed digital euro communication or getting a head start on the next day’s newsletter.
This morning, I went deep on US bank charters. It started out with an idle question about Circle’s dual charter strategy, and next thing I know I’m reading up on the Bank Holding Company Act and what “comptroller” means.
There is something big going on here I think most of us are overlooking. Ideally, I’d continue pulling on these threads over the next few days and write a comprehensive piece on where we are and why, because it is complex and I’m not a banking expert (although I did once work for a bank, back when I was young and naïve). But, here’s where the discipline of publishing a daily newsletter comes in handy: the constraint of time hones focus on the part of the picture most relevant for this publication’s mission.
So, the following may feel rushed or compact, but let’s consider it a starting point – I may come back to this soon.
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