Reporter's notebook

Northwestern Financial Review, Nov 4, 2000 by Olmsted, Monte

News from the Nebraska Independent Bankers Association convention Sept. 28-29 in Lincoln

There has been much discussion about increasing deposit insurance levels. One solution would be indexing future deposit insurance increases to inflation. But at what rate? FDIC Vice Chairman Andrew "Skip" Hove looked at past FDIC coverage limit amounts and indexed them to inflation by today's standards. Here are his results:

1934: $5,000 would convert to $61,000. 1966: $15,000 would convert to $75,400. 1969: $20,000 would convert to $88,900. 1974: $40,000 would convert to $132,000. 1980: $100,000 would convert to $197,000.

What would Hove suggest? The former Nebraska banker believes the 1974 base would be a good benchmark.

The high number of bankruptcies remains a concern, Hove said. During his NIBA convention talk, Hove noted the personal saving rate has dropped below zero.

For the year, the personal savings rate has hovered around 0 percent, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, a division of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Actually, for February and August of 2000, the personal saving rate dipped below zero to -0.1 percent, and -0.4 percent, respectively. So for those months, consumers spent all their incomes and more.

The recent statistics denote the personal savings rate is in negative territory for the first time since the Great Depression, when annual rates of -0.8 percent were recorded in 1932, and -1.5 percent in 1933.

The accompanying chart includes annual personal saving rates from selected years. The most recent annual number available from 1999 is the lowest personal saving rate since 1938, which also recorded 2.2 percent.

Outgoing NIBA president Greg Hohl hails from Wahoo, Neb., the small town known as the home office of "The Late Show with David Letterman" and mythical source of the show's famous Top 10 list.

Just how did Wahoo and its 3,900 residents receive that distinction and supplant Grand Rapids, Mich., as the home office in May 1996? According to TV Guide, Letterman began talking on the air about how much he enjoyed saying the word "wahoo." Soon after, then-Nebraska Gov. Ben Nelson wrote a letter explaining that Wahoo was not only an expression, but the name of a town in Nebraska.

Citizens of Wahoo bombarded "The Late Show" with letters, postcards, flowers and beer coolers in attempts to wrestle the home office away. Letterman told the folks of Grand Rapids they could keep the home office if they sent better things than the "Wahooligans."

The contest was on. Among the items Wahoo sent were a 1976 Ford Pinto with a tattered love seat strapped to the top, hot dogs and a wedding gown. But what probably won it for the Nebraska town was the wall clock made of cow droppings complete with a dead fly attached.

Two huge billboards that lead into Wahoo note "The Late Show" connection as well as a large wooden caricature of Letterman that stands watch downtown. So where is the home office? It's a downtown phone booth at the corner of Fifth and Broadway, designated so by the Wahoo Chamber of Commerce.

Hohl's bank, the $37 million Wahoo State Bank, is within a block of Letterman's home office. The phone booth can be seen from the bank.