Back during the height of financial crash, I used to host a regular Friday afternoon/evening thread on the old Life After the Oil Crash forum called Bank EATED Fridays in which I and other readers would place friendly bets on how many financial institutions the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was going to shut down and take over heading into that weekend. The closings always happened on Friday nights to minimize publicity and thus the resulting harm to public confidence in the banking system, and there were almost always multiple closings every week.
I stopped hosting that regular discussion after LATOC went off the air, mostly because the games being played in the financial system were having the intended side effect of slowing the number of bank failures. If I was still playing that game, however, I think I'd be placing a bet on seeing the Sterling Savings Bank on the FDIC's EATED list in the near future. Here is NWCN.com with the details:
Sterling Savings Bank laid off scores of employees around the Northwest this week."The bank needs to appropriately reflect...reality." Hmmm...maybe someone should tell that to Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and all of the other "Too Big To Fail" parasites.
The Spokane-based bank gave pink slips to 160 employees. Bank leaders said that is six percent of their workforce.
“Given the challenging interest rate environment and the uncertain economic outlook, Sterling must position itself for continued success, including lowering its operating expenses,” CEO of Sterling Financial Corporation Greg Seibly said. “Sterling has fewer assets today than it did just a few years ago and, although this has been a difficult decision, the bank needs to appropriately reflect that reality.”
The layoffs started on Wednesday and spanned across five states.
Managers cut positions at all levels to lower operating costs.
Bonus: When people can't earn interest on their money, they have no incentive to save it for later
I wouldn't imagine they'll be shutting down simply because they made an adjustment to their staffing based on their current size. Perhaps I would be concerned if it was branch staff, or if they hadn't just been approved to purchase First Independant.
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