With all the divisiveness in Washington these days, it might seem unusual for President Barack Obama’s nominations to coast through the Senate.
But Thomas Curry is one of those people whose nominations should be as close to a slam dunk as possible.
Curry, a former Massachusetts banking commissioner, hasn’t necessarily been whisked through the Senate. Obama in July nominated Curry to run the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the unwieldy-sounding agency that oversees national banks. The Senate’s banking committee approved the appointment last month. A Republican on that panel who had raised concerns about Curry told Reuters earlier this month that he wouldn’t oppose Curry’s nomination, and he knew of no other opponents in the Senate.
With the banking committee’s endorsement, his final Senate approval should be coming soon.
That will be a great relief to bankers and housing activists in Massachusetts who have nothing but positive things to say about the guy.
Sure, many of them concede to home state pride because one of their own is about to take one of the most powerful positions in the industry. But that’s obviously not the only reason they want to see him get the job at the OCC.
They cite a wide range of factors, based on their experience with him as the state’s top banking regulator before he left and joined the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s board in January 2004.
Curry won’t be a shill for the banking industry. As Massachusetts banking commissioner, he was widely considered to be someone who was fair, balanced and open-minded. He didn’t do the industry’s bidding. These traits will be particularly important as the federal government wrestles with the problems caused by some of the country’s biggest banks. As the comptroller of the currency, Curry would be the top watchdog for the likes of Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup. Bankers and activists in this state say he’ll be a strong one.
He won’t promote an ideological agenda. Curry is described as someone who doesn’t bring personal biases or political motivations to the table. He served under Republican governors in the 1990s and early 2000s. But it’s a telling sign that the two banking commissioners in Gov. Deval Patrick’s administration were top deputies of Curry’s.
He already has a relationship with a key leader in the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. One of those Curry protégés, Steve Antonakes, left his job as this state’s banking commissioner last year to head bank supervision at the new federal agency. The exact role that the CFPB – created by the Dodd-Frank financial reform law last year – will play in keeping industry excesses in check still isn’t clear. But it will clearly be helpful for Antonakes and his staff to have a direct line to the country’s chief regulator for national banks.
He certainly knows a thing or two about industry disasters, having been a banking regulator during the early 1990s. Sure, there are differences between the real estate troubles that sunk a parade of New England banks in the early 1990s, and the mortgage market meltdown that helped doom hundreds of banks around the country within the past few years. But in both eras, most of the banks got into trouble by overextending themselves with risky investments. That this region’s banking industry survived the latest scourge largely unscathed is an indication of the lessons that local bank managers learned 20 years ago. It’s also a positive reflection on Curry’s tenure and legacy.
It will be helpful for us to have someone in charge in Washington who understands community banks, and mutual banks in particular. Not every nationally-chartered bank that Curry will oversee is a goliath like B of A or JPMorgan Chase. In fact, nearly a quarter of the banks in Massachusetts have national charters. Curry’s agency will need to pay close attention to these small banks as well, especially after Dodd-Frank expanded the number of federally-chartered banks that get OCC oversight. Mutual banks – which are owned on behalf of depositors, not shareholders – are unusual beasts in most states outside of New England. But there’s a proud tradition here, a tradition that is quite familiar to Curry.
While the pace of bank failures has started to slow since the depths of the Great Recession, it certainly hasn’t ended. More than 30 banks across the country have closed in just the four months since Curry was nominated. There’s not much he can do about that now.
But Curry can help set the stage in Washington for new approaches – approaches that could curb such systemic failures the next time the country’s economy hits a rough patch. It’s not an easy task, but someone’s got to do it. And there are plenty of people here in Massachusetts who believe Curry is the right one for the job.
Jon Chesto is the business editor of The Patriot Ledger. He may be reached at jchesto@ledger.com or on Twitter at @jonchesto.
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