Best advice: don’t panic

Best advice: don’t panic

EDITOR:

The Vindicator ran a story Aug. 14 about the cease and desist orders on Home Savings and Loans issued by state and federal regulators. But what does this alarming regulatory intervention mean to most Home Savings customers? The short answer is, not necessarily much.

These interventions happen when the regulatory bodies observe a decreased likelihood of a bank to service its liabilities. While it’s anyone’s guess how Home and Savings will come out of this, the most prudent course of action for a typical depositor is: to do nothing. As it is, deposits in a single account are covered up to $100,000, and in joint accounts twice that.

Even if the bank would go out of business, that would likely cause only a minor hardship to most depositors. For instance, in a recent close down of the First Priority Bank in Bradenton, Fla., the bank was closed for business on Friday, Aug. 1, and all deposit accounts were transferred to a competing bank over the weekend, and deposits were fully redeemable by the next business day on Monday, Aug. 4 (including contents in safety deposit boxes).

While stocks, mutual funds, and T-bills and T-bonds and the like are not part of the FDIC insurance, as pointed out in the Vindicator story, this has no bearing on the bank itself. Even if the bank serves as a custodian for the above non-deposit investments, it has no ownership claim on the assets themselves.

Therefore, the most prudent course of action for small depositors — if they are otherwise happy with the bank — is to stay put, and hope that the regulatory warning does not cause a run on the bank, but rather helps the bank sort out its finances.

TOMI OVASKA, PhD (Economics)

Poland

Suburbs get first bite

EDITOR:

I congratulate Mayor John W. Smith of Sebring for once again waving the bloody shirt of taxation in his Aug. 10 letter about a countywide transit tax.

For years, suburban cities and villages have gamed the economic development pie to maximize their income while reducing the associated expenses to an absolute minimum.

How, you ask. They use their ability to offer superior economic incentives to lure low paying industries into their communities. A laughable scenario you say? Not at all. Ohio wage taxes go first to the community in which they were earned. Thus the individual earning, say $8 per hour must first pay for the privilege of working to a community in which he or she consumes a minimum of goods and services. This same individual must then pay a significantly higher percentage of his or her income to the city in which he or she must actually live.

Ah, you say, you can live wherever you want in this country. Not exactly. The true beauty of this little system is that low wage earners are economically barred from living where they work. After all, there are usually requirements for such things as minimum lot size, minimum square footage for your house and even without such requirements, a low tax rate is almost guaranteed to increase property values. These outsiders need only be mentioned at election time when you tell your constituency how hard you worked to keep their taxes low and, oh yes, how diligently you have worked to keep low-lifes out of their plantation.

MICHAEL STEPHENS

Warren

A story helps soothe grief

EDITOR:

It seems that whenever I pick up a paper I am inundated with news of killings, robberies, child abuse and all the other bad things that happen in our world. I myself am faced with soaring gasoline and heating costs and the high price of food and other necessities just like everyone else. Add this to our politicians taking swipes at one another and then there is the war, and the knowledge that our young men and women are being killed; 4,125 of them to date.

I know that bad news is news, but is there any balm that can be applied to this continual negative news? Yes, recently one of your reporters did a story on the stars at Jerusalem Lutheran Church in Columbiana; the church is posting a star for each service person that has died in the Afghanistan/Iraq war, along with the name, rank, and hometown of each of those brave men and women. The article she wrote was handled with dignity and respect, and the pictures told the story.

We feel that the families of these soldiers need to have their grief acknowledged, and by your publishing the story of our stars, you help to soothe their unbearable grief.

NELDA HAWKINS, secretary

Jerusalem Lutheran Church

Columbiana

Preserve smoke-free law

EDITOR:

Most Ohioans love the fact that we have enjoyed smoke-free indoor air for the past year thanks to the Smoke-Free Workplace Act, voted upon in 2006 and enacted in 2007. That enjoyment and health benefit is now threatened by Senate Bill 346, which has been introduced by 13 state senators just before the summer recess. In an attempt to weaken the state’s simple, strong and, most importantly, voter-approved Smoke-Free Workplace Act, SB 346 would create exemptions involving family-owned businesses and private clubs.

This bill would eliminate the level playing field for business owners, while picking and choosing which employees deserve protection from secondhand smoke. There are now a total of 28 states that have passed comprehensive smoke free laws, making more that half of the nation’s population protected. Let’s not go backward by allowing our elected officials to dilute and weaken what the voters of Ohio have decided upon. I am asking the citizens of Ohio to please show your support for clean indoor air by contacting your state senators, congressmen and governor, and help keep Ohio smoke-free!

GEORGIA CASE, RN

Austintown

X The writer is a school nurse for Austintown Local School District.