Choosing a Bank

This used to be a fairly simple process. Convenient location probably dictated your choice. Maybe you knew somebody at the branch. If you were really interested, you'd check interest rates and fees.

Not so simple any more. Now you have to worry about whether the bank is going belly-up.

Case in point. I've banked at Washington Mutual for years. Now it's gone, swallowed by Chase. Now I could stay, and turn into a Chase customer, except that I don't like Chase and don't trust it any farther than I can drop kick an anvil. So I'm shopping.

The obvious choice around here is Zions Bank. But I'm not going to go with the obvious choice. Some people out there are saying, "Oh, it's because you're not LDS." That has nothing to do with it. Zions doesn't care about my religious affiliation, and I don't care about its. My concerns are strictly what any business person's should be when making such a decision: business.

Zions has made a lot of loans. If SunCrest is any indication, a lot of those loans are garbage. I know there is a substantial amount of collateral tied up by the ANB receivership because ANB and Zions have the same collateral. That isn't good.

Zions also seems to have become the FDIC's local go-to guy for buying up problem banks, Silver States being the latest example. The FDIC's demands for those services are about to go up, and the value of the takeovers is about to go down. I'm wondering if Zions will find a way to just say "No."

Finally, Zions has engaged in some creative accounting, as evidenced recently by its having to pull off-books investments back onto the books. How can I tell what its liabilities actually look like?

If you aren't going through an analysis like this, you're asking for it. It simply isn't simple any more.