You can still bank on your local branch being good

Lou Marzeles
News Editor

     So I got online Saturday morning to visit my bank site and see how my vast fortune was multiplying itself into dizzying stratospheres of wealth. I almost wrote that sentence with a straight face.
     Well, I did go to my bank web site Saturday morning. To my surprise, and no doubt that of countless others also checking their accounts online, there was a notice effectively telling me I didn’t have my bank any more. Yes, it’s true: I have an account at Columbia River Bank. Or I used to.
Now, courtesy of Oregon banking regulators and the FDIC, I have an account at Columbia State Bank.      Presumably that means Columbia State Bank is not on the FDIC’s Problem Institution list, as Columbia River Bank had been since November of 2008.
     The closing of Columbia River Bank came as a surprise, yet it makes one wonder how Columbia State Bank was able to get their snappy new signs hanging over the old bank signs so quickly, since the closing occurred just Friday. The new signs were in place Monday morning. I do not suggest sinister leaking of news here. It’s just mighty fast turn-around.
     The bank closing is a good illustration of how a national news story (and the closing of Columbia River Bank made national news) impacts a local main street. We have, after all, a branch of the failed bank right on our own main street. I stopped in there Monday morning and found out what I already knew: no one there could say anything about the matter, and I was referred to an FDIC spokesman.      But I also stopped in because I like the people who work there; they’re friendly and competent and nice to deal with. I wanted to get a feel for how they were doing. One of them told me with clear confidence: “This is a good place to work.”
     Maybe some of them should have been working in corporate management. Columbia River Bank might still be around.