Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > U.S. Forums > Georgia > Atlanta
 [Register]
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
 
Old 02-24-2019, 07:47 AM
 
32,009 posts, read 36,668,783 times
Reputation: 13274

Advertisements

Good point, jsvh. No citizen is safe while the Georgia legislature is in session.

 
Old 02-24-2019, 07:59 AM
 
8,302 posts, read 5,662,197 times
Reputation: 7542
Quote:
Originally Posted by arjay57 View Post
good point, jsvh. No citizen is safe while the georgia legislature is in session.
ha!
 
Old 02-24-2019, 08:47 AM
 
32,009 posts, read 36,668,783 times
Reputation: 13274
Quote:
Originally Posted by citidata18 View Post
ha!

It's true, but I can't take credit for thinking it up. It's an old saying from way back.
 
Old 02-24-2019, 08:49 AM
 
Location: Jonesboro
3,874 posts, read 4,679,355 times
Reputation: 5365
Default Atlanta's Suntrust..

Thanks for linking that AJC article which rather nicely laid out the roots of Georgia's failure to remain a center of relevance today in banking in the aftermath of mega-mergers & overall consolidation in the banking industry. The AJC piece largely dovetails with my own memory of how the wave of banking consolidations moved through Georgia as one after another, our largest homegrown Georgia institutions were picked off first during the 1980's, then again during the 1990's & now with a hard episode of finality commensurate with the loss of Suntrust's HQ in 2019.

As laid out in the AJC piece, small town bankers dominated the state banking industry and the legislature and failed to look beyond their own small banking fiefdoms and forward to the rapidly arriving more modern & consolidated status for their industry.
In view of the failure to have forward thinking in their outlook, the Georgia banking industry has been decimated into a state of where we no longer will have an institution of any real size or power left based in the state, Synovus out of Columbus notwithstanding.
Visualize how Atlanta would be different today if our 3 former largest banking institutions of long ago, namely First Atlanta, C&S Bank & Suntrust, were all survivors via smarter state legislation & smart management & growth on their part. Atlanta would be a larger metro not only in terms of job & population numbers but also in terms of it's overall influence in the business world.
As a long ago employee of C&S bank, formerly the largest bank in Georgia, I watched with hope as that bank made moves to fight the trend toward out-of-state ownership of our local banks & we did for quite a while think that they would be the large Atlanta-based surviving financial institution.

Looking back to that era before C&S fell to out of state ownership, as witnessed by their size, prestige & outlook, they built the huge tower in Midtown that we now know of as the Bank of America Tower. Many city-data forum members here may be too young or too new to Atlanta to realize that today's Bank of America had nothing to do with the construction of that huge Midtown banking tower. But rather, it was a result of the efforts of the once dynamic banking force known as C&S Bank.
It's clear to those of us with long memories of the Atlanta & Georgia banking scenes that C&S Bank looked forward to surviving independently and to being a money center banking institution of relevance on the national stage.
 
Old 02-24-2019, 10:36 AM
 
8,302 posts, read 5,662,197 times
Reputation: 7542
Quote:
Originally Posted by rocotaco View Post
Think how different Atlanta would be had it been able to work on it's traffic problems. Instead, like most else here it's just a mess.
Very true.

Funny thing is, another Charlotte company (Electrolux) is perhaps most notorious for rejecting Atlanta because of its traffic.

It's still not too late to address the traffic. Problem is, it will require spending a ton of money and visionary leadership. Local/state leaders need to get serious about the type of future they want for the city and soon (**** or get off the pot).

Last edited by citidata18; 02-24-2019 at 10:45 AM..
 
Old 02-24-2019, 11:11 AM
bu2
 
23,971 posts, read 14,760,934 times
Reputation: 12781
Quote:
Originally Posted by Born 2 Roll View Post
Atlanta gained more Chase bank branches when New York-based JP Morgan Chase bought Seattle-based WaMu (Washington Mutual) out of federal (FDIC) receivership during the 2008 Financial Crisis after WaMu collapsed in what was the largest bank failure in American history.

Chase basically bought WaMu for pennies on the dollar at the bargain basement price of just under $1.9 billion.

Chase saw an opportunity to expand into the markets of the West and the South (including metro Atlanta) at a time when much of the rest of the country was in a seemingly apocalyptic financial and economic crisis... And because Chase avoided much of the subprime lending meltdown that consumed multiple other major banks, Chase was in position to take advantage of a prime opportunity to secure hundreds-of-billions of dollars of banking assets for only pennies on the dollar.
That was kind of a funny merger. I left Texas Commerce Bank (which was later acquired by Chase) for a S&L. That S&L failed and was acquired by WaMu. WaMu was then acquired by Chase and then went in and found they still had all my old info and showed me as a customer since my original account opened.
 
Old 02-24-2019, 12:50 PM
 
10,365 posts, read 11,408,870 times
Reputation: 7744
Quote:
Originally Posted by bu2 View Post
That was kind of a funny merger. I left Texas Commerce Bank (which was later acquired by Chase) for a S&L. That S&L failed and was acquired by WaMu. WaMu was then acquired by Chase and then went in and found they still had all my old info and showed me as a customer since my original account opened.
Chase acted lightning fast in snapping up the remains of WaMu.

Many WaMu branches were only closed for like one day before being reopened as Chase branches.

I have a friend who had a cousin from California who was attending college in Atlanta at the time who had a checking account with WaMu before and during their collapse in 2008. She banked with WaMu because they had no checking fees and I remember that (because she was a struggling college student) it seemed like she often had no more than a few dollars in her account at any given time.

That situation sticks out years later because it seems that much of WaMu's entire business model apparently was based upon being too dependent upon catering to customers with limited financial means.

Because of how fast Chase was able to swoop in and acquire the remains of WaMu, I suspect that a bank like Chase had probably targeted WaMu for eventual acquisition years before just by looking at WaMu's questionable business model.

JP Morgan Chase likely knew as early as at least 2005 (probably earlier) that it probably would be only a matter of time before a bank like WaMu collapsed under the weight of its 'toxic assets' (subprime mortgages) giving Chase an opportunity to gain a foothold into lucrative markets like Georgia (metro Atlanta), Florida, Texas, and the West Coast by swooping in and buying the remaining non-toxic assets of a collapsed bank like WaMu for only pennies on the dollar.
 
Old 02-24-2019, 01:01 PM
 
Location: Atlanta, Birmingham, Charlotte, and Raleigh
2,580 posts, read 2,475,793 times
Reputation: 1614
Quote:
Originally Posted by rocotaco View Post
Think how different Atlanta would be had it been able to work on it's traffic problems. Instead, like most else here it's just a mess.

On that C&S tower - it's never recovered from the B of A pullout and was sold at a loss some years back. You can bet SunTrust plaza and Peachtree center will take major hits. There will not be tenants waiting to fill all that office space. Incidentally, it was reported recently that Lenox Park campus is being sold, since AT&T is vacating that space. And then you have the skyscraper 675 W peachtree building that is being vacated by them as well.


Atlanta's motto seems to be build even more today for tomorrow you'll sit vacant. Maybe they can film some movies in these empty towers downtown?
This is pretty accurate. The original iteration of my urban planning career involved land use and development and comprehensive master planning. One thing I can remark upon is how this region is so quick to process and promote development but doesn't have any signed or leased tenants to fill much of these vacant and underutilized spaces in many of these developments. Whereas, as surrounding major metros like Nashville, Birmingham, the Update (Greenville, Spartanburg, and Anderson), and Jacksonville have the exact opposite issues of too much demand and not enough space and development online to accommodate. I've said for a while now that this region needs to slow down and work on its quality of life for those who are already here rather than focusing on trying to entice others to come here when it cannot accommodate the former. The day this region (because let's be honest it's not really a city) stops growing beyond 8% to a lower rate of growth, it's going to have a serious reality check.
 
Old 02-24-2019, 01:40 PM
 
8,302 posts, read 5,662,197 times
Reputation: 7542
Quote:
Originally Posted by jero23 View Post
This is pretty accurate. The original iteration of my urban planning career involved land use and development and comprehensive master planning. One thing I can remark upon is how this region is so quick to process and promote development but doesn't have any signed or leased tenants to fill much of these vacant and underutilized spaces in many of these developments. Whereas, as surrounding major metros like Nashville, Birmingham, the Update (Greenville, Spartanburg, and Anderson), and Jacksonville have the exact opposite issues of too much demand and not enough space and development online to accommodate. I've said for a while now that this region needs to slow down and work on its quality of life for those who are already here rather than focusing on trying to entice others to come here when it cannot accommodate the former. The day this region (because let's be honest it's not really a city) stops growing beyond 8% to a lower rate of growth, it's going to have a serious reality check.
Part of the reason is that Atlanta really started to take off during the Real Estate Bubble from the 1980s through mid 2000s, when any mouth-breathing developer on two legs could get a loan to build unrealistic projects based on speculation and false demand.

Today, credit is so much tighter that it's difficult to get any project off the ground

Last edited by citidata18; 02-24-2019 at 02:06 PM..
 
Old 02-24-2019, 01:57 PM
bu2
 
23,971 posts, read 14,760,934 times
Reputation: 12781
Quote:
Originally Posted by jero23 View Post
This is pretty accurate. The original iteration of my urban planning career involved land use and development and comprehensive master planning. One thing I can remark upon is how this region is so quick to process and promote development but doesn't have any signed or leased tenants to fill much of these vacant and underutilized spaces in many of these developments. Whereas, as surrounding major metros like Nashville, Birmingham, the Update (Greenville, Spartanburg, and Anderson), and Jacksonville have the exact opposite issues of too much demand and not enough space and development online to accommodate. I've said for a while now that this region needs to slow down and work on its quality of life for those who are already here rather than focusing on trying to entice others to come here when it cannot accommodate the former. The day this region (because let's be honest it's not really a city) stops growing beyond 8% to a lower rate of growth, it's going to have a serious reality check.
What do you think 2008-2013 was? There was a reason Atlanta took longer than almost anywhere else to pull out of the recession.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.


Closed Thread


Settings
X
Data:
Loading data...
Based on 2000-2020 data
Loading data...

123
Hide US histogram

Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > U.S. Forums > Georgia > Atlanta
Similar Threads

All times are GMT -6. The time now is 02:00 PM.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top