During the last several years, concern has increased that changes in the financial system have made it harder for rural banks to attract enough deposits to meet local credit demands. While urban banks may face some of the same problems, it is widely believed that funding pressures have increased...

One of the most important roles commercial banks perform is to lend to small businesses. Such lending is vital to the regional economy because small businesses generally lack access to alternative sources of credit and because they account for a major share of job creation. Moreover, small...

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...

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,...

The movement of people into and out of a state can have important implications for the state’s economy. The total net inflow of people to a state matters because it affects the overall supply of workers in the state. Economists predict that growth in the national labor force will slow in...

The banking industry has undergone substantial consolidation during the last 15 years, and that process has accelerated in the 1990s. One effect of this consolidation has been to greatly reduce the number of independent and locally owned banks. Some banks have been acquired by distant banking...

The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City conducts a monthly survey of over 100 manufacturers across the Tenth District. Other Federal Reserve Banks conduct similar surveys of manufacturers within their districts, as do a number of regional associations of purchasing managers. ; The increased...

Bank mergers have attracted much attention during the last year due to a surge in mergers among the nation's largest banking companies. The consolidation of the banking industry has been going on much longer, however. Since the early 1980s, the number of banking organizations has fallen by more...