The Banker Next Door

This episode is an interview with author Richard Vague. We discuss his new book The Banker Who Made America: Thomas Willing and the rise of the American financial aristocracy. The book details the life of Thomas Willing a banker, merchant trader, and politician who bankrolled the American revolution and then fundamentally shaped the financial architecture of the new republic. Thomas Willing got his start as a partner in Willing, Morris and Company in 1757. He became mayor of Philadelphia in 1763. From 1781 to 1791 he served as President of the Bank of North America, the first bank in America. In 1791 he became a commissioner for First Bank of the United States (America’s first central bank), then served as President. Around 1800 he rose to be the wealthiest man in America. Thomas was stained with a major controversy. In 1776, as a delegate for Pennsylvania, he voted against American independence TWICE. Pennsylvania’s moneyed elite and the emergent lower and middle classes embroiled the politics of 1776 in bitter class conflict. Below are links to Richard’s website and First Bank of the United States website. Link: Richard Vague | Understanding Economics Link: First Bank Website

This video is a clip from BND: Strategy Room Live Stream on April 25, 2026. The Department of Justice dropped its investigation into Jerome Powell over the cost overruns with the Federal Reserve headquarters project. By dropping the investigation, this should clear the way for Kevin Warsh to be confirmed as the next Federal Reserve chairman. Senator Tom Tillis was holding up the confirmation and would not vote for Warsh until the investigation was dropped. This week Kevin Warsh had his confirmation hearing where he was questioned about his wealth, Fed independence, his thoughts on gauging inflation, the Fed’s mission, management of the balance sheet, interest rates, forward guidance, and the culture at the Fed.

The Banker Next Door (BND) weekly live stream show. Strategy Room provides financial news, commentary, top stories in the business world, economic indicators, and all things banking for the week.

This video is a clip from BND: Strategy Room Live Stream on April 18, 2026. As redemption requests continue to increase for Private Credit funds, Apollo CEO Marc Rowan thinks that ‘everyone is an idiot’. BlackRock is faring better than some of its peers including KKR, Apollo, Blue Owl, and Blackstone. Meanwhile regulators are starting to look hard at the insurance industry and its exposure to Private Credit through investments and life insurance, specifically annuities. Life insurance companies have built up an approximate $1 Trillion dollar exposure to Private Credit. During earnings calls bank executives continue to downplay their exposure and risks to the Private Credit Market. KeyCorp CEO Christopher Gorman believes that the problems in Private Credit will lead to increased lending opportunities for banks in the future. Large banks are working with S&P Global to launch an index of credit-default swaps that would protect buyers against defaults by companies in the index. The index will be called CDX Financials. Thus giving investors a way to short the Private Credit Market. All this while individuals like Jeffrey Tucker and publications like Bank Director begin to ask the question is the Private Credit Market falling apart?

This is part 40 of the crypto series. In this episode we examine the Trump family crypto drama surrounding their company World Liberty Financial. While Trump family members and other administration figures kids appear to have made out in the company dealings, investors have not fared as well. Justin Sun is one of the crypto investors who is crying foul. In other crypto news, Strategy continues to purchase more Bitcoin and wants to make its Stretch Preferred Stock more appealing to investors. The NYSE is going all in on crypto. Charles Schwab is launching crypto trading to compete with Coinbase and Robinhood. Kraken is getting ready to announce an IPO filing and the purchase of derivatives firm Bitnomial. This episode reviewed multiple articles from Investopedia, Banking Dive, The Wall Street Journal, and CNBC.

The exodus from Democrat run states and cities continues to increase as they triple down on policies of increasing taxes and regulations. This phenomenon does not happen just in the U.S., it is also affecting places like the U.K. There is nothing that will kill an economy faster than exceedingly high taxes and regulation. This episode goes through a series of articles from Fox Business, CNBC, The Epoch Times, and Investopedia showing how states like Washington and New York continue to increase taxes on the wealthy that are leading to an exodus of people and companies. Some of the topics include Uber co-founder leaving California for Texas, Apollo opening second HQ in Florida, Los Angeles leads nation in massive exodus, and Jamie Dimon believes this problem will only get worse unless lawmakers change policies. New tax policies include billionaires’ tax in California, marriage penalty tax in Washington, Massachusetts town proposed 50% property tax hike, and New York second home tax. The side effects of these tax policies include California losing advanced industry companies, and towns in New Jersey see a spike in home sales and values as middle class gets priced out by the wealthy fleeing New York. To make things worse New York Mayor Mamdani is also proposing a global wealth tax. All the news is not bad as Democrat policies have created the ‘boom belt’, an 11-state region in the southeastern U.S. This region has absorbed 70% of all U.S. population growth in the last five years and has a GDP of $9 trillion. In addition, there are nine states in the U.S. that do not tax capital gains and eight states that do not tax personal income.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a bomb shell report on April 15, 2026 disclosing a massive amount of fraud in the U.S. government. After analyzing data from fiscal years 2018 through 2022, the GAO estimates that the federal government lost between $233 billion and $521 billion ANNUALLY to fraud! The fraud was perpetrated in three main ways. 1) Misuse of Pandemic Relief funds, 2) Stolen Benefits, and 3) Improper Payments. The U.S. government has a massive fraud problem that needs to be addressed immediately! This episode reviewed an article from The Epoch Times (subscription required) titled “521 Billion Fraud Landscape: What to Know” and the report from GAO. The GAO report is titled “Combating Fraud: Challenges in managing fraud risks in federally funded, state-administered programs.” A link to the GAO report is included below. Link: GAO-26-109093, COMBATING FRAUD: Challenges in Managing Fraud Risks in Federally Funded, State Administered Programs

Bank M&A activity started 2026 doing okay. Not lighting the world on fire, not bad, just okay. Deal volume in 1Q 2026 slowed to the same level as 1Q 2025 with 36 and 35 transactions respectively. Bank CEOs and executives agree that the window for M&A is still open but geopolitical problems are slowing things down. Many bank CEOs were questioned about potential mergers on 1Q earnings calls. Many emphatically shut down any suggestion of a potential merger. There have been rumors around Citibank needing to purchase a regional bank to bolster their deposit base in the U.S. There are regional banks such as Truist and PNC that could either be targets or on the hunt. Additionally, worldwide M&A activity was strong in the 1Q 2026, within 11 deals with transaction values over $10 billion. Total transaction value of $305 billion was the best since the 2Q of 2019. This episode reviewed multiple articles from S&P Global Market Intelligence and Banking Dive.

The FDIC released their state profiles for the 4th quarter of 2025. This series provides quarterly summaries of banking and economic conditions for each state. The FDIC website has a chart of the entire U.S. Click on the state you would like to view, and it gives you a 1-page PDF. Each profile includes the following categories: economic indicators, banking trends, and banking profile. A link to the FDIC website is included below. Link: FDIC State Profiles | FDIC.gov

This video is a clip from BND: Strategy Room Live Stream on April 18, 2026. David Sacks, who was the White House AI and crypto czar, has become co-chair of the tech advisory council expanding his role. Mr. Sacks has advocated the White House barrel forward with AI development completely disregarding any associated risks. Last week, Scott Bessent and Jerome Powell called an emergency meeting with every major bank CEO to discuss Anthropic’s new AI system Mythos. Mythos has the White House extremely worried because it finds bugs in older software at alarming rates. These bugs would allow hackers to get into company’s systems and cause an extreme amount of damage. The White House is now scrambling to head off this threat. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei was summoned to the White House on Friday to meet with Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. All this is happening as Gen Z grows more skeptical and angrier about AI. This all beckons the question, should AI be reigned in?

The Banker Next Door (BND) weekly live stream show. Strategy Room provides financial news, commentary, top stories in the business world, economic indicators, and all things banking for the week.

This video is a clip from BND: Strategy Room Live Stream on April 11, 2026. Insurance regulators are concerned about the amount of money major insurance companies have invested in the Private Credit market. In addition, insurance companies may have inflated the valuations of those investments. Where have we seen this before? We also review other related Private Credit news of the week.

This is part 39 of the crypto series. In this episode we examine Bitcoins performance over the last month through a chart and multiple articles. Has Bitcoin found a new resistance level? Will it see continued increases? Has Satoshi Nakamoto been found? Coinbase receives conditional approval from the OCC for a bank trust charter. Franklin Templeton acquires crypto firm 250 Digital to be included in their new Franklin Crypto unit. PayPal, Convera, and Nium are racing to incorporate stablecoins in cross-boarder plays. Strategy purchases an additional $1 billion in Bitcoin after posting a $14.5 billion unrealized loss in the 1st quarter of 2026. Iran’s crypto economy has increased to approximately $7.8 billion as crypto and stablecoin have aided both their citizens and the regime. FDIC sets stablecoin standard for banks. White House Economic Council downplays stablecoin threat on bank deposits in new report. This episode examined multiple articles from The Epoch Times, The Wall Street Journal, S&P Global, Investopedia, CNBC, and Coinbase.

Bank Director has released their 2026 Risk Survey. Key findings from the survey include regulatory risk recedes, examiners are learning on the job, cybersecurity oversight, identifying cybersecurity gaps, credit risk concerns, and risk responsibility. Bank are feeling better about being overburdened by bank regulators. They also feel like new bank examiners are inexperienced. Less than 50% of bank board’s brought in an outside cybersecurity expert to learn from. 89% of banks did conduct a tabletop exercise of their cybersecurity incident response plan. Overall credit and commercial real estate were top concerns this year. 54% of banks surveyed employ a Chief Risk Officer (CRO). This episode reviewed an article from Bank Director titled “2026 Risk Survey: AI exposes threats, knowledge gaps” and the 2026 Risk Survey report. Links to both are included below. Link: 2026 Risk Survey: AI Exposes Threats, Knowledge Gaps | Bank Director Link: 2026-Risk-Report-Open.pdf

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon released his 2025 letter to shareholders as part of the bank’s annual report. Mr. Dimon listed five main concerns which include inflation, intensifying competition, Americans’ loss of trust in government, artificial intelligence, and weak allies. Mr. Dimon was critical of Basel III and G-SIB proposals from regulators. In addition, Mr. Dimon has concerns about Private Credit, but notes that even if losses are elevated through the next credit cycle they will not rise to the level of being a systemic problem. This episode reviewed JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s annual letter to shareholders. A link to the website is included below. Link: Jamie Dimon's Letter to Shareholders, Annual Report 2025 | JPMorganChase

Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) was a French provincial scholar. As a young man, Bastiat was heavily influence by Adam Smith and Benjamin Franklin. He developed profound beliefs in life, liberty, and property rights. His greatest work is a book simply called “The Law”, which was published just before his death in 1850. Bastiat’s grandfather passed away in 1825 leaving him the family estate. He became a gentleman farmer and part-time scholar. Over the next twenty years Bastiat would write many articles, papers, and books. He also got involved in public life. In 1831, he was elected a justice of the peace. In 1848, he was elected as a deputy to the National Assembly. He would serve until his death in 1850 of Tuberculosis. This episode reviewed an article from The Epoch Times (subscription required) titled the life of Frédéric Bastiat. “Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.” – Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

The sunk cost fallacy is a mindset of continuing onward with an investment or project based on past information even though logic dictates that the outcome will not be favorable. Even when we are faced with flawed reasoning, human nature will not allow us to change course because of aversion to waste and the need to be right. The sunk cost fallacy can occur in both business and government. The sunk cost fallacy emanates from a sunk cost expense, which is a lost amount of time, money, or effect, that cannot be regained. Behavioral economics tells us that the foundation of sunk cost fallacy is psychological and tied to several biases which include loss aversion, commitment bias, and endowment effect. This episode reviewed articles from Investopedia and The Epoch Times (subscription required).

The Banker Next Door (BND) weekly live stream show. Strategy Room provides financial news, commentary, top stories in the business world, economic indicators, and all things banking for the week.

Foreign banks are seeking to gain access to the U.S. banking market. This is nothing new, but what is new is the type of bank. The new competition tends to be fintechs and neobanks with a digital-first approach. Some examples include OakNorth Bank, Revolut, and Nubank. These banks tend to be built around a customer-friendly digital interface. Younger customers are seeking a digital first approach. However, while the U.S. market can offer immense opportunities, it also presents difficult hurdles to overcome. Not all foreign banks have found success entering the U.S. market. Monzo, a U.K. based fintech, recently decided to give up on its push into U.S. banking. Monzo decided to shift their focus bank to Europe where it gained a banking license in December. This episode reviewed articles from Bank Director and Banking Dive. The article from Bank Director is titled “Foreign banks set sights on U.S. expansion.” The Banking Dive article is titled “Monzo to close US operations, accounts.” Links to both articles are included below. Link: Foreign Banks Set Sights on U.S. Expansion | Bank Director Link: https://www.bankingdive.com/news/monzo-close-us-accounts-june-operations-50-layoffs-europe-license-anil-layfield-uk-ipo/816357/

Banks can experience buyer’s remorse when they purchase costly software to upgrade their technology stack. This experience can be extremely painful as most community banks have small technology budgets to work with. Spending the bank’s budget on new technology that does not work out will most likely end up as money that cannot be recovered. This episode considers reasons why organizations regret tech purchases and offers strategies to use when purchasing new technology. This episode reviewed a blog post from PCBB titled “Avoiding tech buyer’s remove at your CFI.” A link to the blog post is included below. Link: Avoiding Tech Buyer’s Remorse at Your CFI