FDIC director to discuss plan to restructure banks

Thomas M. Hoenig, director of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), will discuss his plan to restructure America's banking system during an IBM lecture Monday at Westminster College in Fulton.

Hoenig will reveal his proposal to restructure the nation's banking system in order to keep it sound and secure for future generations.

"I have a proposal," Hoenig said, "to strengthen the U.S. financial system by simplifying its structure and making its institutions more accountable for their mistakes. Put simply, my proposal would help prevent another 2008-style crisis."

Sponsored by The Churchill Institute, Hoenig's lecture is free and open to the public. He will reveal his proposal to restructure banks at 4 p.m. in the Lecture Hall of the Wallace H. Coulter Science Center on the Westminster campus.

Before he was appointed as the new director of the FDIC on April 16, Hoenig was president for 10 years of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank.

Hoenig joined the bank as an economist in 1973. He was promoted to vice president in 1981, senior vice president in 1986, and president in 2002.

In 1986, Hoenig led the bank's Division of Bank Supervision and Structure, directing the oversight of more than 1,000 banks and bank holding companies, including Central Missouri area banks. The banks ranged in size from having less than $100 million in assets to those with up to $20 billion in assets.

Hoenig was a 20-year member of the Federal Reserve System's key Federal Open Market Committee from 1991 to 2011 that advises the Federal Reserve on decisions to set goals for benchmark bank interest rates. The Federal Reserve Bank attempts to affect interest rates by buying and selling government securities in the open market to expand or contract the amount of money in the banking system.

To help the tornado-stricken people of Dumas and surroundings, donations can be made to the Delta Area Disaster Relief Fund, care of the Delta Area Community Foundation, P.O. Box 894, Dumas, AR, 71639, or through the Arkansas Community Foundation, 700 S. Rock St., Little Rock, AR, 72202.