Letter from our Founder

In 1873, acclaimed English journalist, Walter Bagehot, sat down to write a perspective on the London money market that has stood the test of time: “I believe that our system, though curious and peculiar, may be worked safely; but if we wish so to work it, we must study it. Money will not manage itself, and Lombard Street has a great deal of money to manage.”

A hundred and fifty years later, despite all of our eyebrow-raising advances in technology, money still will not manage itself. It is managed by people, in institutions, most of whom you will never hear about, because the business press often neglects to tell their stories. Maybe the deal is a story, or the blowup is a story, but the daily work of keeping deposits safe, credit flowing, and examiners satisfied often goes uncovered.

Thirty-nine years after Bagehot’s perspective, John Pierpont Morgan Sr. (or as friends called him, “J.P.”) was called before Congress to account for his monopolistic power. Asked whether commercial credit rests primarily on money or property, he said no: “The first thing is character. Before money or anything else. Money cannot buy it. Because a man I do not trust could not get money from me on all the bonds in Christendom.” Banking is the business of proving good character, and earning trust over decades.

We started The Standard because the people doing the work of banking deserve coverage held to the same standard as that work. The executives running American banks, particularly the thousands running them far from the money centers, are making some of the most consequential decisions in the economy, and almost nobody is writing about it seriously. We intend to.

The question thick in the air of those offices today: “what do we do about artificial intelligence?” The Standard is not just a celebration of the banking industry, and those operating inside of it, but a perspective on where we see AI having the most impact in banking today. As Richard Feynman remarked in the final sentence of his Challenger commission report in 1986, “for a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.” We don’t think you should be either.

What you’ll find in this inaugural issue: Former Acting Comptroller of the Currency, Michael Hsu, on why financial risk management and agentic research are poised to co-evolve. Paul Davis on why NBA veteran Harrison Barnes decided to invest in rural Iowa banking. The story of a Virginia bank that did everything its regulators asked and discovered that remediation and recovery are entirely different things. And a profile of Emprise Bank’s Matt Michaelis, who stepped in as CEO in 2018, grew his family’s Kansas bank 66% to nearly $3 billion, and maintained an expansive local art collection along the way.

We called this magazine The Standard because the name is a commitment, and this issue is about setting one. Bagehot was right that the system must be studied. This is us studying it. You will judge how well.