A Picture Is Worth … Not Much

They say “a picture is worth a thousand words.”

But I don’t think I can come up with 1,000 words to describe this photo of President Trump and NCUA Chairman Rodney Hood.

And apparently, neither can the NCUA.

Here’s what we can piece together, partly courtesy of Politico.

Trump spent a recent Saturday at Trump National Golf Club in suburban Virginia. It’s apparently a really neat place.

If you don’t believe it, just consult the club’s website, where it’s described as “Northern Virginia’s top-ranked private golf club.”

Trump hung out with Hood, Andrew Giuliani (yeah, he’s the son) and Nick Owens. Now, assuming that it’s the right Nick Owens, he’s a senior advisor at Qorvis Communications. And he’s a bona fide Washington, D.C. insider.

Again, if you don’t believe it, simply consult Qorvis Communications’ website. It’s right there.

He worked on Trump’s transition team and is an influential insider in Washington.

We can assume that the foursome played golf, but we don’t know for sure. And if they played a round, we don’t know if Trump cheated (he has that reputation).

Here’s how the NCUA described the photo: “On Saturday, NCUA Board Chairman Rodney E. Hood had the opportunity to thank President Donald J. Trump for his leadership in enacting policies that grow the economy and support America’s credit unions.”

The agency could provide no additional details.

Let’s just leave it at that.

Terrific Taxi Loans

Once upon a time, taxi loans were a really, really good investment for credit unions.

After digging into the archives of the NCUA, here’s what we found out.

Commenting on the ill-fated Risk-Based Capital rule, here’s what one credit union executive had to say in 2014:

“The most serious defect with this proposal is that the NCUA is giving itself the power to make blanket assumptions about member business loans without any regard for the quality of the underlying loan or the history of the institution making the loans,” the executive wrote.

As a result, he said, his credit union, which had specialized in taxi loans since 1936, would be penalized for lending above a threshold.

The indignant executive said taxi loans had increased in value by 1,000% since 1980 and had only decreased in value twice since the 1970s.

“Common sense demands that a credit union holding these loans should not be treated the same way as a credit union offering an MBL product for the first time, but that is exactly what the NCUA is proposing,” he argued.

The signer of the letter?

Richard Kay, CEO.

The credit union?

LOMTO Federal Credit Union.

The NCUA closed LOMTO in October 2018, after the credit union lost $83.1 million between 2015 and 2017.

The 2014 letter, of course, doesn’t address what might happen if ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft would come along and decimate the taxi industry.

The taxi loans were sound and the NCUA should take no action that would prohibit credit unions from loading up their loan portfolios with taxi loans, Kay argued.

And of course, the letter doesn’t address allegations by The New York Times that the credit union had been downright predatory in making those loans to drivers and other medallion owners who might not understand exactly what they were going into.

And it didn’t contemplate that some New York City cab drivers would kill themselves because they had to make large payments on loans that were based on their medallions.

Maybe concentrating on taxi loans wasn’t such a good idea after all.

The Senate’s Seersucker Tradition

Capitol Hill has some weird traditions.

Each chamber has its own bean soup recipe, which is served every day in congressional restaurants.

Senators have a long-standing tradition of carving their names on the bottoms of their desk drawers.

And then there’s “Seersucker Day.”

In case you wonder when that is, you missed it. This year, it was on June 13.

On that particular day, senators who wish to follow the tradition wear seersucker suits rather than their traditional drab garb.

In the days before air conditioning, the U.S. Capitol was hot during the summer (even hotter if you count the hot air emanating from members).

Southern senators knew how to deal with the heat. They replaced their dark wool clothing for a lighter, cotton suit.

Then, according to the Senate historian’s office, a New Orleans, La.-based tailor designed a lightweight, rumpled, pale blue and white striped suit made of cotton. He called the material seersucker after the Persian words for milk and sugar.

The material withstood frequent washing that was necessary because of the broiling Capitol.

Then, along came air conditioning and out went the seersucker.

In the late 1990s, Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) decided to bring back the tradition as a way to demonstrate that “the Senate isn’t just a bunch of dour folks wearing dark suits and – in the case of men – red or blue ties.”

Lott decided that the second or third Thursday in June would be warm enough for seersucker. On the day before the event, word was circulated that the next day would be “Seersucker Thursday.”

In 2004, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) decided that women needed to follow the tradition.

“I would watch the men preening in the Senate,” she said, “and I figured we should give them a little bit of a horse race.”

The next year, 11 of the Senate’s 14 female senators wore seersucker; Feinstein bought them the suits.

As I said, weird.

David Baumann is a correspondent-at-large for CU Times. He can be reached at dbaumann@cutimes.com.