As you can tell by clicking on the Opera category at the right, my wife and I are subscribers to Chicago’s Lyric Opera. We’ve been subscribers since we’ve been married and I was a subscriber for nearly ten years before that, thirty years in all. Over the years you become acquainted with those sitting around you, a varied crew. Our seating companions, for example, include the manager of a local theatrical company, an opera singer and teacher, a retired business executive and his charming wife, and a banker.
On Saturday I was chatting with the banker who looked absolutely horrible, overworked, and stressed. She’s the owner of a small, local bank. Here’s something to think about that emerged from our conversation. The obsessive attention being paid to the megabanks that got themselves into trouble through excessive risk-taking may destroy the smaller banks. By all rights small, local banks that didn’t take excessive risks and weren’t involved in subprime lending should be prospering right now. It ain’t necessarily so.
