Ethical Behavior: No one is truly listening to you

When leaders in other organizations ask me how they should go about launching an ethics program, they are often enthusiastic. Whether because of an article recently read or a director’s conference recently attended, these men and women have “gotten religion” and cannot wait to go forth and conquer. For those of you who heard me recently recount my discussion with Pam (here), you know that it takes a certain kind of mindset to lead the ethics program. But leaders launching an ethics program within an existing organization are also often convinced that its success will be measurable in a manner akin to counting widgets produced per hour, or similar.

The common refrain I hear is, “We’ve got to get this [ethics] program up and running fast! We’ve already drafted communications, planned all-staff meetings at each facility. We’re going to tell people all about it, so they’ll get on board right away!”

Now I don’t know about you, but when people I don’t really know are rushing toward me smiling, frantically waving their arms, and telling me in crazed fashion that “they’re here to help”, I run the other way. And so will employees when confronted with top-down headquarters-scripted communications and town hall meetings. Many of your employees have been at their facility longer than you’ve been out of college. They’ve seen the “program of the quarter” launch, fizzle and fade more than once. Don’t let your well-intentioned (and necessary) ethics program join the fizzle-and-fade folly.

Here’s the rub…your employees aren’t really listening to you most of the time. Unless you directly impact a man or woman’s paycheck, schedule, assignments, or working conditions, you are likely immaterial to their day-to-day professional landscape. An employee can only speculate what a remote company executive does each day, but he/she can surely tell you what his/her boss is doing, not doing, saying, not saying, etc.

If your line supervisor breaks promises, falsifies expense reports, or takes office supplies home for personal use, his/her employees not only know about, but they resent the supervisor for it. That very same supervisor could talk about ethics all day long, handing out buttons and pens galore, and the employees will smirk and roll their eyes.

Bottom line is that it’s not what you say about ethics that will strengthen ethical behavior in an organization, but what you and your fellow leaders model. The measure of success for a newly-launched ethics program will be that future moment where ethical behavior has been modeled so consistently from the CEO through the ranks to the shop floor, that when one employee sees another employee about acting unethically, the first employee holds the second employee accountable.

No words or fancy slogans will be necessary from that moment on…

An Effective Ethics Program: It’s Really Not About You

Recently a colleague at another organization had sought my input regarding her plan to initiate a formal ethics program. Pam’s organization had grown both organically and through acquisition, and with it new and more delicate issues had arisen. As its senior human resource executive, she had begun to sense that the burgeoning and increasingly diverse employee population could no longer simply rely upon an employee handbook and online training modules to guide day-to-day ethical decision-making.

Pam had done her homework. She understood the basis for developing a comprehensive Code of Conduct; establishing a Fraud & Ethics Hotline; and senior leadership setting the “tone from the top.” But where Pam got stuck was identifying the individual who would lead the Ethics Program and provide its “face” and its “voice”.

We delved into the importance of objectivity and consistency in all program activities and all communication issuing forth from the Ethics Officer. Pam recognized that such communication will range from informal dialogue to formal drafted opinions. We weighed the advantages and disadvantages of various professional backgrounds from which she could draw forth a qualified individual. Successful Ethics Programs  have been led by professionals with backgrounds as diverse as Legal, Internal Audit, Human Resources, Technology, Education, and Theology.

We agreed that the common thread of objectivity must prevail. An effective ethics leader is neither solely an advocate for the employee nor for the organization, but is instead an advocate for the shared values embodied in the organization’s Code of Conduct and associated policies. Thus, an ethics leader doesn’t bring his/her own personal opinions, viewpoints, morals, or theology to bear when reviewing a matter, but instead adheres to the organization’s documented guidelines.

Quite frankly, when an ethics leader acts in accordance with the organization’s culture of shared values, he/she will occasionally have to issue a formal opinion that will contrast with his/her own personal opinion. The outcome is about the good of the organization—not about personal preference or moral judgment. It’s not about you.

Over the course of time, this consistently objective approach will result in a library of ethics opinions that will provide predictability and precedent for leaders, employees, and successor ethics leaders to rely upon. Employee trust in the impartiality of the program will accrue through this neutral approach, further strengthening the organization’s culture of compliance.

And with that, Pam set off to recruit the ethics leader that would best represent her organization.

Compliance & Ethics Guidance: “Require” or “Recommend”?

In our capacity as Compliance & Ethics professionals, we are invited daily by business line management to provide guidance on diverse topics. Because we are managing compliance and ethics across an entire organization, each topic must be reviewed with multiple internal stakeholder interests in mind. Externally, we are subject to scrutiny by our customers, our regulators, our industry, and the press. Thus, no review is undertaken in a theoretical vacuum, nor is any resulting guidance intended to provide a one-size-fits-all solution to all similarly-situated topics. Business line management doesn’t always understand those underpinnings when receiving guidance from us.

A frequent question heard by many C&E professionals upon delivering compliance guidance or an ethics opinion is, “So, is this a requirement…or merely a recommendation?” Management attaches very different treatment to our response to that question. Requirements may entail additional cost—whether an opportunity cost of a forgone initiative or a hard cost like implementing additional information system controls. Recommendations may at first blush appear to be optional activities that can be ignored and forgotten. The seasoned C&E professional knows that she must not leave management with any ambiguity about the risks of alternative future courses of action. We only add value to our organizations when we can achieve alignment between management’s risk appetites and our own governance, risk management and control frameworks.

A little confession here…at the onset of my career as an internal auditor, I wrote my recommendations as if they were self-evident edicts born of a brilliant mind. Fortunately I was also paired with managers and mentors who were equipped to deliver humbling learning opportunities to me, for which I have been ever grateful. Those formative leaders challenged me to support my assertions with specific corporate policies, statutes, or regulations. If my assertion was one supported by a matter less well-defined, such as fair trade practices or a matter of public policy, then I was urged to develop recommendations that objectively balanced the strategic interests of the business with the external interests, so as to allow management to make fully-informed decisions. These distinctions served me well. Perhaps you can relate to this transformation from your own career path.

Today I continue to improve my craft. I take great care in drafting compliance memoranda and ethics opinions that ensure well-substantiated transparency. I employ the word “require” when I seek to guide management away from the expedient pitfalls that ultimately lead to reputational loss, fines, lawsuits, or jail time for corporate officers. I employ the word “recommend” when I seek to guide management toward actions that will improve the customer experience; enhance the value of the brand; or reduce aggregate regulatory risk. To overuse “require” when “recommend” would suffice is to invite the “Chicken Little” effect and diminish Compliance & Ethics’ effectiveness. To overuse “recommend” when “require” is truly appropriate is to dilute our own integrity as C&E professionals and ignore our fiduciary duty to our organizations.

As such, when providing compliance and ethics guidance to management, I recommend (but not require) that we choose our words purposefully and substantiate objectively.

When Crisis Erupts: Surmount or Surrender?

“The easiest period in a crisis situation is actually the battle itself.

The most difficult is the period of indecision -- whether to fight or run away.

And the most dangerous period is the aftermath.

It is then, with all his resources spent and his guard down, that an individual must watch out for dulled reactions and faulty judgment.”  

~Richard M. Nixon, 37^th President of the United States

As a Chief Compliance & Ethics Officer, you know that the eventuality of crisis striking your organization is not a matter of “if”, but only of “when.” You spend your career crafting and implementing a governance system of policies & procedures, training, monitoring, and reporting whose value will ultimately be assessed in those moments and days following the crisis. Not all systems (nor all leaders) will survive the test.

Crisis will not politely schedule an appointment with you on a lazy afternoon, but will more likely descend upon you furiously, publicly and embarrassingly at the most inopportune of moments. Crisis will arrive in the guise of a viral tweet, a regulatory inquiry, or a criminal indictment. A loyal staffer will hesitantly summon you from a meeting into the hallway to advise you of the breaking news. And so begins the moment of decision.

As Compliance leaders we have trained our entire lives to guide and protect our organizations from harm. The very same principles that we have employed to prevent and mitigate risk will come into play when we must navigate our organization, its leadership and its board through and beyond the crisis. Decisive action that engenders trust must remain at the forefront of the response.

Thus, together we must continue to:

•        Act ethically and decisively;
•          Communicate frequently and transparently; and
•          Modify practices appropriately.

Act ethically and decisively

Crisis does not represent your organization in its entirety. Your mission, your values, and your people remain fundamentally sound, even when something has gone awry. Therefore, even as you and your leadership team are undertaking an investigation and crafting a response to the statement, incident, or charge, you will continue to direct your employees to perform their day-to-day responsibilities with the accustomed level of adherence to ethics, compliance, and mission-focus. Your organization will survive the crisis, and so the continued service to your employees, clients, customers, vendors and shareholders must remain highly-functioning.

Communicate frequently and transparently

Do not compound the temporary negative impact of a crisis by shrouding the crisis in a cloak of shame and secrecy. While not proud of the event that has triggered the crisis, you remain nonetheless committed to your employees, your customers, your brand, and your mission-focus for the long run. Within that long view context, communicate quickly that leadership is:

·         aware of the situation;

·         taking it seriously;

·         cooperating fully; and

·         is committed to resolving it.

Convey that future communications will follow as additional information becomes available, and adhere to that pattern, even if only limited information becomes available. Your stakeholders are better served by hearing the truth from you, than the mistrust that will take root if they begin to receive their information—accurate or misconstrued--from external sources.

Modify practices appropriately

While some crises will end with a conclusion that the crisis was merely malicious and unwarranted, often the investigation will reveal a compliance or control weakness that must be addressed by your organization. Once identified, own both the root cause and the solution, communicating the same to your stakeholders. Then set to work implementing the required changes that will ensure the situation has been appropriately addressed. If additional training is warranted, then make every effort to involve the affected employees in designing and testing the training before it is rolled out to the larger audience. Schedule subsequent time to review the modified practice and test its effectiveness, regardless of whether required to do so by a regulatory body or not.

***

Crisis will erupt. You will be called upon to act in the best interest of your organization and its stakeholders. If you have prepared yourself, your leadership team, and your board in advance of this moment, then you will pilot your organization to a brighter tomorrow with the flag flying high. Otherwise, armed only with dulled reactions and faulty judgment, you will find yourself waving the flag of surrender.

Starving for Compliance? Bring your Risk Appetite

“If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first.”  ~Mark Twain

 

As Audit, Compliance & Ethics professionals, it is often our job to “eat a frog” and you likely find yourself sitting down to a banquet of frogs when crisis strikes your organization. Some of us consciously chose to enter the AC&E profession, while others with whom I’ve spoken tell me how their roles morphed into compliance functions. Either way, once we’ve accepted the responsibility to safeguard our organization’s enterprise risk management program, we must faithfully deploy an appropriate compliance framework.

One cannot simply purchase a compliance program at an online retailer, download it to your tablet, and check that task off your list. There is no one-size-fits-all compliance program that is going to align perfectly with every organization’s ERM model. The design of the compliance program begins with a studied understanding of the organization’s risk appetite. Delivering an off-the-shelf or generic compliance program to an organization without factoring in its risk appetite is like delivering a freeze-dried meal to a guest’s table without inquiring of her culinary preferences.

Risk appetite is that level of risk that an organization is prepared to willingly accept before mitigating actions are required to reduce it. Formulating the risk appetite requires the Board of Directors to consciously identify its consensus balance between the anticipated benefits of a chosen course of action and the threats that an uncertain future inevitably brings. Each area of risk may enjoy differing risk appetites. For instance, a well-capitalized organization bearing a trusted brand may be more averse regarding reputation and litigation risks, but more inclined to accept a moderate degree of financial and strategic risks. Such may be the variations found also in compliance risk appetites.

A compliance purist—if such a person exists—would trend strongly toward risk aversion. A Gordon Gekko (credit to Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street” fame) would trend strongly toward risk hunger. Since compliance is not generally viewed as a profit center, a typical organization’s Board of Directors will formulate a compliance risk appetite that represents its view of an appropriate balance (i.e. expects ethical business conduct that achieves its mission). A publicly-traded company may seek to maximize shareholder value and profit, but likely seek to avoid criminal and civil prosecution. A non-profit organization may seek to maximize its impact serving the largest number of people in a community, but likely seek to minimize its administrative cost ratio and excessive CEO compensation.

Organizations that design, employ, and monitor compliance programs that align with the Board of Directors’ risk appetite will encounter fewer compliance failures over the long-term. I am careful to point out that all organizations, no matter how well-run, will experience a compliance failure at some time. A risk appetite acknowledges that while risk may be mitigated, it generally cannot be entirely eliminated. To eliminate all risk is to forgo meaningful opportunities that competing organizations would be willing to accept, thus neutralizing your organization’s effectiveness in the space in which it competes. This fact does not apply only to for-profit companies, because non-profit organizations also compete for scarce resources and relevancy. Risk must always be recognized as a factor to be managed.

Whether you are designing a new program or enhancing an existing compliance program, you will want to ascertain your organization’s defined compliance risk appetite. Your compliance program, including training, monitoring, and Board-level reporting, must align to that risk appetite to provide appropriate risk management tools to support your organization. Finally, periodically revisit the relationship between the stated risk appetite and your program elements to ensure that you are making appropriate adjustments.

Don’t starve your compliance program. Embrace the risk appetite. Be prepared to one day confidently defend your compliance risk management program to your external auditors and prudential regulators…and enjoy that frog sooner than later.

WHEN ETHICS AND EXPEDIENCY COLLIDE

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” ~Aristotle

“There are no easy answers' but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.” ~Ronald Reagan


As Compliance and Ethics Professionals, we are daily reminded that violations of law and dignity are no less common now than they were in ancient civilizations. We report upon and read about corporate, government, and personal scandals that boggle the mind. Acts and omissions that defy common sense are nonetheless undertaken out of expediency, greed and ignorance, only to eventually expose the perpetrators in the public square.

Why?

Why--with all the failed historical examples, complex laws, regulatory bodies, education and training—do some organizations continue to succumb to poor judgment and wrongdoing, while other organizations rise above?

While we speak often about the ‘tone at the top’, we must also acknowledge that ideas and actions emanate at all levels of our organizations. Driven by deadlines, profits, corporate goals, marketplace competition, etc., individuals contemplate ideas and execute upon those ideas. But not all ideas for generating revenue, decreasing expenses, or streamlining processes merit the same consideration.

An organization’s culture, modeled by its leaders at all levels, must unambiguously communicate that execution must meet its values. A healthy exchange of ideas should always be weighed sufficiently and transparently by knowledgeable stakeholders, so as to expose potential ethical, legal and financial pitfalls. Though we are charged with educating our operational and administrative colleagues about our Code of Conduct and our Legal and Regulatory obligations, we have the additional obligation to actively counsel them as well.

Leveraging our Anonymous Reporting Hotlines, Internal Audit Departments, and industry and regulatory trends, we ourselves must be prepared to actively engage our colleagues across our organizations to probe for prospective lapses. In a highly-charged competitive environment, we cannot idly sit by and fail to question if expediency is trumping ethical decision-making. Let’s not forget that we are the protagonists—not the villains—in this story.

Your Compliance & Ethics Function: Aligned, Not Maligned

Today, more than ever, your organization needs you. As a Chief Compliance & Ethics Officer navigating the increasingly complex regulatory landscape, your objectivity and expertise provide your board and senior leadership team with a beacon to guide them. Oftentimes you are viewed as the guardian at the gate.

While your colleagues and directors will likely embrace and support your role, your precautionary observations, and your recommendations, that enthusiasm does not always translate vertically throughout the organization. Members of your team may already have encountered the resistance that emerges when raising regulatory compliance, ethics or internal control concerns in the midst of deadline-driven projects. Not often do the profit center managers in our organization stand up and cheer our scrutiny and counsel when we review their proposed product and service offerings, marketing materials, and incentive compensation plans.

We do not further the compliance & ethics mission in our organization when our role is viewed in isolation as too far removed from the day-to-day goals and objectives of our organization. Let’s face it—our organization was most likely founded to obtain a for-profit or not-for-profit objective, not to support our compliance & ethics function.

Over the years I have identified some key steps that allow own compliance & ethics role to align tightly with the growth strategies and objectives that our organizations strive to implement. I refer to these steps as getting down into the MUD:

·         Meet as many key managers at all levels in your organization as feasible. The more colleagues you become familiar with, the greater likelihood that your involvement will be sought out earlier in the planning, development, and execution of new programs, products, and initiatives.

·         Understand genuinely the plans, imperatives, and metrics that drive key managers in your organization in their respective roles. When you truly understand the why, what and how of each division and department, then you will be better able to anticipate and address potential regulatory compliance, ethical, or internal control exposures.

·         Defer to your operational colleagues when a decision does not require approval from you. Your credibility as Chief Compliance & Ethics Officer is strengthened when you resist the urge to exert your will upon every decision in a project, program, or product launch.

When we take the time to get to know our operational colleagues, understand their roles more fully, and defer to their subject-matter expertise, we will find that those same colleagues are much more likely to invite us to advise them regarding regulatory compliance, ethics, and internal control matters. Instead of being maligned as the killjoys at headquarters, let us become aligned with our shared organizational mission as we serve to safeguard it from foreseeable risks.

Strength and Sustainability: Collaborative Compliance Amidst Complexity

I simply do not have all of the answers. There, I have said it.

My simple statement sums up the collective admission of Compliance, Audit and Ethics professionals globally. The annual proliferation of domestic and international regulatory requirements continues to proceed at an ever increasing rate. When only a decade or two ago, a chief compliance officer might likely have understood the details of all regulatory responsibilities within his/her realm, many of us have now grown accustomed to reliance upon specialized colleagues to identify the details of specific branches within our own compliance universe. At least two easily recognizable trends have led to this reality: global commerce and systemic failure.

Global commerce has both driven and benefited from technological and economic advances throughout history. Progressing beyond the steamships that replaced clipper ships, the internet built upon the initial success of the transoceanic cables laid long ago. While local trade rules and customs remain, the international Law of the Sea has been joined by International Free Trade Agreements and transcontinental legal structures, most notably the European Union, where supranational legal structures both supplant and co-exist with domestic laws and regulations.

Systemic failures that have led to financial crises within nations as diverse as Greece, Ireland, Japan and the United States have resulted in the now-familiar remedies of International Monetary Fund austerity measures, the Third Basel Accord, and Dodd-Frank  Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, to name a few examples. Regulators have sought to eliminate pathways to fraud, largess and market manipulation widely blamed for the global crises by promulgating lengthy and complex regulatory solutions.

Compliance professionals who once may have laid claim to comprehending and administering compliance programs involving an entire continent or nation have succumbed to a level of regulatory complexity that makes such independent mastery incomprehensible. Even for those of us who oversee primarily domestic compliance programs, international influences are now omnipresent in Dodd-Frank, the Bank Secrecy Act, FCPA and the U.K. Bribery Act of 2010.

At the end of the day, Compliance, Audit and Ethics professionals are exactly that—professionals. We do not simply throw our hands up and decry the unfairness of increasingly complex regulatory requirements. True to our nature, we seek to understand as much as possible about our responsibilities to fulfill those compliance requirements in conjunction with our organization’s core mission and objectives. But our inquiries and information gathering must extend beyond our own individual knowledge and planning. Today’s increasingly complex regulatory environment requires us to collaborate with colleagues both within our organizations and beyond.

I would propose that now is the time to build stronger, more sustainable Compliance Programs through intelligent collaboration. It must not be viewed as a sign of ignorance or laziness when we humbly and actively partner with fellow Compliance, Audit and Ethics professionals to ascertain best practices. Likewise, we must continue to embrace the business line leaders within our own organizations to build collaborative compliance solutions that fulfill our regulatory responsibilities without unnecessarily impeding daily operations and long-term strategies.

Effective Regulatory Compliance…we may not each be able to do it alone, but we can certainly do it more constructively together.

COMPLIANCE: A VALUE-ADDED SERVICE TO THE ORGANIZATION

“It’s a sign of troubled times when the concept of ‘pressure’ becomes an acceptable excuse for ethical shortcuts and moral shortcomings. Pressures are just temptations in disguise and it’s never been acceptable to give in to temptation.”  ~Michael Josephson

As a profession, we have worked diligently to shed the stereotype that long-plagued us, that of being a legalistic cost-center who impeded organizational growth. [While you may not have ever personally experienced the stereotype, let me assure you that many of us have received the sarcastic “oh, here comes Audit/Compliance…”]

Like me, many of you regularly engage in projects within your organizations to provide the compliance and ethics (C&E) perspective.  In some organizations, we are routinely invited to project planning sessions and kick-off meetings, remaining to consult with the project team until implementation. In other instances, we become aware of an in-process initiative that contains elements of regulatory risk and invite ourselves into the project. Either way, C&E professionals provide valuable subject matter expertise to ensure that the organization’s we represent are well-grounded in compliant activities.

That being said, I was reminded recently that our work is not over. A colleague had relayed to me a situation at her organization that continues to cause dismay to C&E professionals. During a stakeholder meeting to explore system integration and replacement options, my colleague put forth a variety of system security and operational suggestions to strengthen the information security and consumer compliance framework from inception. After dismissively alluding to costs associated with these suggestions more than a few times during the meeting, the project leader looked up at my colleague and replied, “Well, we may not be able to incorporate each of these items, but—you know—sometimes you just have to go along to get along…” Apparently, the project leader even slyly winked at my colleague as this was said.

I get a little choked up as I recount my colleague’s reply, as with a spine of steel she looked back (without a wink) across the table and said, “Well, no. This organization doesn’t knowingly build non-compliance into its new initiatives, so I wouldn’t sign off without the controls in place.” When the project leader published the next version of the system requirements, each of the compliance components had been incorporated as submitted, and had been risk scored accordingly.

We are going to be asked to participate in many initiatives over the course of our C&E careers. Certainly we will always seek the most cost-effective and internally-conducive methods to achieve compliant outcomes, because we believe in our organizations and wish to help them succeed in the marketplace.

But occasionally we are going to be asked to step beyond the fiduciary responsibility with which our Board has entrusted us, and which society expects of us. It is in those moments when our fidelity to doing the right thing will supplant simply bowing to doing the popular thing. It is in that moment of fortitude and loyalty to duty that we will have added true value to our organization…

D.C. LOBBYIST TARGETS HARD-WORKING FAMILIES

***DISCLAIMER: As always, this brief policy article represents my own research and opinions and does not purport to represent the opinions of nor was it funded by any third party organization.***


"My parents moved to Los Angeles when I was really young, but I spent every summer with my grandparents, and I'd stay with my grandfather on the farm in Longview. He was retired from the railroad, and he had a small farm with some cows and some pigs. I remember part of my youth was feeding hogs and plowing fields and stuff, so that's a part of me." -Forest Whitaker

"We believe this (Debit Card Interchange) rule should be thoroughly and expeditiously reviewed prior to implementation to ensure that it will not raise fees or otherwise harm at-risk communities, including communities of color." - Hilary Shelton, NAACP

I have become very disturbed over the past several weeks as I've received innumerable pleas from cash-strapped rural and urban families regarding the effect of the pending Debit Card Interchange Rules that threaten to add transaction fees for using a debit card and to take free checking away from those hard-working families struggling to make ends meet.

http://www.savemyfreechecking.com/

Why would anyone want to charge families more to purchase children's clothing and groceries. Don't those big retail corporations earn enough profits already?

And why would anyone want to increase restaurant costs for a family that can only only afford to eat out every once in a while, and even waits to splurge for such a luxury for times between special occasions?

I like fast food, but I certainly don't like any politician pulling a fast one that harms our farm families.

Just plain disrespectful to our working men and women in our cities if you ask me or any other patriot!

What does Illinois Senator Dick Durbin have against hard-working dual-income families?
You can call and ask him at (202) 224-2152.

What did debit card interchange fees have to do with a few unscrupulous and irresponsible former mortgage lenders? And what motivated Illinois Senator Dick Durbin to bring his amendment to the Senate Floor to be included in the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010 when he did?

http://www.savemyfreechecking.com/What_Can_I_Do_675.html

Initially it would appear that Senator Durbin, as a member of the Senate Leadership, simply recognized that the Congressional mood for financial reform legislation could easily absorb another "consumer protection" measure. Yet I couldn't help but question who/what had motivated this particular measure, since the public had not been clamoring for it and no definitive study of the debit interchange topic had concluded that it harmed either the consumer public or the sophisticated commercial enterprises that freely contracted to provide or benefit from debit card interchange services.

When a diverse array well-respected public responsibility groups, including the NAACP, the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the Black Chamber of Commerce, and the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, join together to urge Congress to revisit the well-funded and erroneous legislation, consumers immediately recognize that something is amiss in Washington. Our Congressional leaders certainly wouldn't approve of such financial measures that harm our hard-working spouses stretching every budget dollar!

Does your Congressional representative stand with urban and farm families on the Debit Interchange issue?
Ask him/her: http://www.savemyfreechecking.com/What_Can_I_Do_675.html

The debit card interchange rule doesn't actually have anything to do with legitimate consumer protection for families. Financial services professionals have always supported the common-sense market-driven consumer protection measures and licensing requirements that protect the public from the few unscrupulous charlatans who engage in predatory practices.

Since financial services professionals are simply honest, hard-working consumers with families just like you and me, they clearly recognize that protecting the integrity and public trust within the financial services industry has always provided a win-win outcome. The majority of potential misdeeds are squelched before any damage can be wrought due to internal control policies, ethics training, licensing requirements, and the self-policing nature of the industry.

The debit card interchange rule was a pro-business creation born upon a conference room table within Suite 1100 at 325 7th Street N.W. in Washington, D.C., home of the National Retail Federation, the National Restaurant Association, the National Council of Chain Restaurants, and the Merchant Payments Coalition. These trade associations represent corporate retail and restaurant conglomerates that have long sought to unilaterally renegotiate the debit card interchange fees to which they had contractually agreed. Apparently dissatisfied with their own business leaders' efforts employing commercial negotiation in the free market, these organizations turned to trade association lobbyists to continue the effort using Federal Government action to harm military families by establishing debit card usage fees and eliminating your free checking account.

Enter Rob Green, Executive Director of the National Council of Chain Restaurants (NCCR), who succeeded Jack Whipple last month to manage all NCCR government relations advocacy. Preceding his move within the confines of Suite 1100, Green was Vice President, Government and Political Affairs at the National Retail Federation (NRF), where he served as a senior lobbyist for the world’s largest retail trade association during the influential time leading up to Senator Durbin's introduction of the debit card interchange "consumer protection" rule.

Lobbyist Green immediately recognized that a perfect storm would briefly open the display window of opportunity for the NRF during which time he would propose a government price-fixing rule that would amount to a 72.7% reduction in interchange revenue for the financial services industry that had built the networks and provided the fraud reduction technology that facilitated cost-savings for consumers and businesses. Imagine if the NRF had found themselves on the receiving end of proposed legislation that would have mandated reducing their retail prices by 72.7% to those very same consumers? Would the NRF have simply "embraced" that legislation? We think not.

I am certainly not accusing Senator Durbin or Rob Green of any violations of federal law, but FEC records detail that more than just burgers and fries were in the bag when the honorable Senator and his colleagues met the former-NRF lobbyist and current NCCR Executive Director at the drive-thru window of opportunity. You yourself may follow the money transfers disclosed in publicly-available documents. While some of the world's largest big box retailers represented by Green poured money into organizations associated with Durbin and his former aides lobbying for the rule, the good Senator wove the rule into the larger legislative framework intended to curb the egregious mortgage-related abuses perpetrated by the few.

From a corporate executive viewpoint framed to maximize shareholder returns, one can certainly understand why the investment into lobbying appeared (and continues) to be a prudent investment. But given the certain unfavorable financial impact that the debit card interchange rule would impose upon American families struggling to emerge from the recent financial downturn, I would urge Senator Durbin to assume a new ethical stance and join his colleague Representative Barney Frank to support further objective study of the issue in the light of day and allow the results of such studies to be fully disclosed to non-lobbyists to allow for a proper analysis of the real impact upon the American family's budget.

For leading this effort on behalf of all American families--rural and urban--I applaud the consistent and untiring effort being put forth by Frank Keating (ABA) and Fred Becker (NAFCU) nationally, as well as John Llewellyn (Michigan Bankers Association) and Jordan Kingdon (Michigan Credit Union League) to educate the public about the very real household economic effect that implementation of this dubious rule would wreak. Ultimately, our collective efforts to preserve consumer choice and to protect business from government unconstitutional price-fixing will prevail in the bright light of day. Thank you.