The Banker Next Door

This video is a clip from BND: Strategy Room Live Stream on September 26, 2026. As interest rates continue to rise, is there a correlation between rising bond yields and oil? Over the last week we saw rapid increases in the 30-Year Treasury and 10-Year Treasury. History shows us that as interest rates rise rapidly something always breaks! Where will the break come from? The bond market, multi-family apartment buildings, Government debt, or perhaps the residential real estate and mortgage markets?

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.

ICBA recently released a white paper on bank cyber insurance. The paper discusses current market challenges which include escalating premiums and shrinking coverage, inconsistencies in underwriting, and exclusions, sublimits, and ambiguity. The current AI risk gap in cyber insurance is addressed. The paper then goes into insights and recommendations from community bankers. The paper then wraps up with recommended questions to ask your insurer regarding AI coverage. What makes this paper great are the checklists provided. On page 10, there is an internal readiness checklist with items that should be completed before meeting with your insurer. On page 16, there is a checklist of recommended questions to ask your insurer regarding AI coverage. This episode reviewed a white paper from ICBA titled “Safeguarding Resilience: Navigating Cyber Insurance in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.”

This is part 42 of the crypto series. Bitcoin has increased to $86K is the ‘crypto winter’ finally over? Circle gets a $100M investment from Binance to ramp up global push for their USDC coin. Bastion receives conditional approval from OCC to provide their ‘white label’ stablecoins for other businesses. The company will also manage custody of holding reserves and customer wallets. After The Clarity Act failed to pass through the Senate, the SEC, CFTC, and Federal Reserve are moving to write crypto rulebook. The SEC issued an order to create a temporary pathway for trading certain tokenized stocks, moving toward 24/7 trading. The CFTC submitted a crypto rulemaking proposal to the White House for review. Details of the proposal were not made public. The Federal Reserve proposed rules for stablecoin issuers which would require issuers to back stablecoins with Treasury Bills and develop an application process for banks that want to issue stablecoins. This episode reviews multiple articles from CNBC, Banking Dive, S&P Global, and The Wall Street Journal.  

SBA approvals are down 18% in 2026 compared to 2025. Loans are down because the SBA had to fix a lot of the problems coming out of the Biden administration. Namely, lax underwriting, which led to delinquencies, and expanding the programs to some lenders that should not have had access. SBA loans to specialty trade contractors fell 22% through mid-2026 due to a new eligibility rule barring green card holders. Furthermore, the SBA has proposed changes to NAICS codes and lifting size limits for what is considered a small business. Both proposals are horrible and should not move forward. This episode reviewed three articles from The Business Journals (subscription required) titled “SBA lending is down 18% so far this year – here’s why”, “Subcontractors see SBA loans dry up amid a perfect storm of troubles”, and “The SBA pushes back drastic overhaul of small business size limits after criticism.”

On the eve of a new documentary titled “You Can See Everything” coming out in October, I thought it would be a good idea to revisit the epic disaster that was Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. Theranos was a “Decacorn” start up, meaning it had a $10B valuation, that provided state of the art blood-testing equipment that was supposed to revolutionize the healthcare industry. The company’s product and claims were found to be fraudulent. CEO Elizabeth Holmes and her boyfriend at the time, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani were both convicted and sent to prison. They are both currently still serving their prison sentences. The real questions around this case are how and why? How did Theranos reach such heights before fraud was found? Why did Elizabeth and Sunny do it? This episode reviewed an article from Investopedia titled “Theranos: A Fallen Unicorn.” A link to the article is included below.
Link: www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/020116/theranos-fallen-unicorn.asp

Bank News: WestStar Bank agreed to acquire Southwest Capital Bank, financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. First National Bank of Omaha continues to grow through smaller acquisitions. The bank has announced two acquisitions in the last four months. M&F Bancorp rejected unsolicited offer from mystery bank and decided to move forward with Optus Financial merger. P&S CU agreed to merge with FireFighters CU. New Haven Teachers FCU agreed to merge with Nutmeg State Financial CU. OCC conditionally approved national bank trust charters for Bastion Platforms Trust Co., Agora National Trust Bank, and Catena Trust Bank. Nola Bank gets up and running in Louisiana. Portrait Bank gets up and running in Florida. BCB Bancorp sells $205M in problem loans. Federal Reserve proposed stablecoin rules. Bank of American plans to double AI budget next year and battles for business banker talent. The fight of cross-boarder payments is heating up. This episode reviewed multiple articles from Banking Dive, The Wall Street Journal and S&P Global Market Intelligence (subscription required).

This video is a clip from BND: Strategy Room Live Stream on September 19, 2026. The AI trade is imploding! In less than 30 days the narrative went from everything is great, we are making money, its IPO time, to there might be a few problems with our Frontier AI, to these AI systems might destroy us, to please regulate us now!!! The IPOs are on hold, the revenue streams are all BS, companies have blown through their AI tokens, Chinese competition is increasing, and they are burning through money they don’t have. Answer: Regulatory Capture! The tech bros are looking for a bailout in the form of regulation, so they can secure their monopolies by building a regulatory moat around themselves. Will the government oblige them? Will something get done before they implode?

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.

A new independent review conducted for the Federal Reserve by Starling Advisory Group on the failure of Silicon Valley Bank examined the role of the Federal Reserve supervisory staff to ask if they failed in their oversight of the bank. The report detailed seven critical findings. In releasing the findings, Michelle Bowman stated that the Fed supervisory staff should have known and that SVB’s failure fundamentally shook public confidence in the effectiveness of bank supervision. However, this report did not address the root cause of the run on deposits. It’s connection with the crypto market. The fact that SVB’s chief risk officer role was vacant at the time of failure. That the bank’s CEO was on the board of the San Francisco Federal Reserve, which oversaw the bank. Furthermore, the report downplays the role of social media in driving the run on the bank. This report, while making some good points, falls short of getting to the heart of what happened. This episode reviewed an article from CNBC, The Epoch Times (subscription required) and the Federal Reserve report on Silicon Valley Bank. A link to the Federal Reserve report is included below.
Link: Speech by Vice Chair for Supervision Bowman on initial findings from independent review of Silicon Valley Bank