Recent development in Congress and the courts have focused attention on the relative roles of commercial banks, thrifts, and credit unions. As concern mounted last year about the state of the thrift deposit insurance fund, Congress required commercial banks to share the burden of recapitalizing...

The banking industry has undergone profound changes during the last decade. The most obvious change has been the large number of bank mergers, which have increased both the average size of banks and the area over which they operate. Other changes may also prove dramatic but are at this point...

Commercial banks in Tenth District states continued to perform well in 1997. Profitability remained high, loan quality improved, and loan growth and deposit growth were both strong. Banks in district states also outperformed banks nationwide by all four performance measures.

Commercial banks in Tenth District states performed well in the first half of 1997. Profitability and loan quality remained high, while loans continued to grow at a healthy pace. The only negative was that deposits grew sluggishly, adding to liquidity pressures. Banks in district states slightly...

Bank credit, the sum of loans and securities at commercial banks, is widely viewed as providing information about the current and future state of the economy. Analysts have been concerned about the behavior of bank credit during the nation's recovery from the 1990-91 recession. At first,...

During the last couple of years, concern has increased that the exceptionally rapid growth in business loans at commercial banks has been due in large part to excessively easy credit standards. Some analysts argue that competition for loan customers has greatly increased, causing banks to reduce...