Remember a time when bank officers had to publish banks’ quarterly statements in local newspapers?

It is interesting that banks no longer are required to do that and now they’re in such plight.

Currently, these statements are available to customers who request them or for those who may come across them in a bank lobby.

Even though our local banks appear to be more solvent than larger banks, it makes a consumer and taxpayer wonder why those statements are not being publicized.

In all fairness, few businesses would want their financial information published in the local newspaper, particularly in this day and age. However, few businesses can affect a community or a country, as we recently found out, as lending institutions do — those places we entrust with our money and investments.

When a retail business goes belly-up, it is unpleasant, inconvenient, and disheartening for consumers, to say the least. But when a bank tanks or is struggling, it can send ripples through a community like no other business.

Shouldn’t consumers be aware if a bank is having financial difficulties?

In any one of our Marion County communities, I believe the community would rally around the business, and do whatever was possible to help it stay afloat.

It is kind of the same mentality of “publishing” legal/public notices on a Web site. Yeah, it is there if a person KNOWS to look for it. But for most of the world who may not know exactly when a notice may be published, the local newspaper remains the best way to inform the public.

It sure makes a person wonder where we would be now if these large, commercial banks that received billions of dollars in bailout money (our tax dollars) had to publish quarterly statements for all the world to see.

Maybe that should be the minimal requirement for companies that receive bailout funds.

After all, when they receive tax dollars, doesn’t that make them accountable to taxpayers as to how they spend OUR money?

— susan berG