MidSouth Bank President and CEO Rusty Cloutier is hitting the national airwaves Monday afternoon, appearing as a guest on The Hays Advantage, a Bloomberg Radio talk show hosted by longtime economics reporter Kathleen Hays.
MidSouth Bank President and CEO Rusty Cloutier is hitting the national airwaves Monday afternoon, appearing as a guest on The Hays Advantage, a Bloomberg Radio talk show hosted by longtime economics reporter Kathleen Hays.
Hays' talk show focuses on the economy and state of the market, while also honing in on economic policy.
Cloutier says he's been asked to discuss the banking industry and the state of the local economy since the BP oil spill disaster came ashore more than a year ago.
Cloutier will have good news to report on the local economy, he says, highlighting the recent ExxonMobil oil discover, but will also touch on new banking regulations and how the drastic changes are impacting the bottom line for smaller community banks.
One point of interest for Cloutier is the new Federal Reserve policy still in limbo of capping the fees banks charge for each debit card transaction made. Banks charge a small fee to process each debit card transaction, and the 12-cent cap proposed has been a hotly contested issue for banks that equals 75-80 percent less than what banks currently charge on average, as noted by The International Business Times:
[Federal Reserve Chairman Ben] Bernanke clearly has concerns about the unintended consequences of the Durbin amendment and the Fed staff proposal that would limit debit-card interchange fees to $0.12 per transaction, which would reduce bank debit-card interchange revenue by about 75 percent.
Bernanke is also clearly aware of the banking industry's estimate that the higher fees banks will charge on checking accounts to recover lost debit-card revenue could push perhaps 5 percent of current bank customers out of the system and into the use of check-cashing stores and other nonbank financial services.
Hays' radio show is from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily on Bloomberg Radio; Cloutier is set to join the conversation at 1 p.m.