During the George Bush years, the federal government backed off enforcement of antitrust laws. The Obama Administration says it is reversing those policies, beginning with the business of agriculture.

"Small Banks at Center of Overhaul Debate," a headline in the Washington Post announced this morning. There are 8,000 community banks in the U.S. Not the big boys we've been reading about, but the local banks that we all know from the Chamber dinner and the softball league. And these small town bankers are worried that new financial regulations are going to make their lives miserable. 

The small bankers are, so far, opposing the creation of what Congress is calling the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, a new regulator born of the financial crisis of the last year. The small bankers say they didn't cause the financial meltdown. They aren't involved with sales of credit cards and mortgages or any of the other financial wheeling and dealing the agency is to regulate. And they don't want more regulation.

Proponents of the new regulation have been meeting with the small bankers, trying to get them on their side. The Wall Street banks are also trying to woo the community bankers, knowing that the locals have a lot more pull with members of Congress than they do. So far, the bankers are sticking together and the community banking organizations are lobbying against the new regulation. "We just don't think we need another regulator. One size does not fit all in the regulatory scheme," said Chris Williston, president of the Independent Bankers Association of Texas. "We're really getting punished for the sins of a lot of our big bank brethren."

The Rural Mainstreet Index declined in July, the second month in a row the survey of bank CEOs in rural areas of 11 Great Plains states has shown a decline. The index has shown no growth for the past 17 months. (See chart above.) 

Ernie Gross, the Creighton University economist who maintains the index, said that a weak global economy had hurt the farm sector of the Midwestern economy. Land sales and sales of farm equipment have weakened in recent months and only 6.3 percent of the bankers surveyed for the index forecast an increase in farm income over 2008. The CEOs interviewed said the problem with farming wasn't yields, but low prices. Yields will be 10-15 percent higher than last year, but prices are expected to be 25 percent lower. Hiring remains weak in these small towns, as the rural areas of the region have lost 5 percent of their jobs in the last 12 months. At the same time, home sales have continued to decline and loan volumes have slackened.

None of the bank CEOs said the effects of the stimulus package had been large or meaningful; more than a third said the impacts of the increased federal spending had been zero. Gross asked the bankers if they favored a tax on high income Americans to pay for expanded health care coverage. More than two-thirds said they definitely did not support such a tax. Only 2.1 percent favored a tax on the wealthiest to pay for coverage of the uninsured.

Unemployment is still higher in rural American than in the cities. But the jobs picture changes from state to state, region to region.