10 Values of Branch Banking and Trust Company

1. Reality- Take things as they are. Not what you want or wish them to be.
2. Reason- an "active mind"---a mind committed to learning from experience, profiting from mistakes, and being free from evasion.
3. Independent Thinking- "the most important psychological decision you can make, to be responsible for yourself." Says, John Allison, former CEO of the bank who is also responsible for the values.
4. Productivity- For Allison, BB&T is looking for high performers who have "a gut level commitment to getting the job done."
5. Honesty- With BB&T it's an obsession with ethical conduct 24/7, complete transparency---not even a white lie, and no exceptions [my emphasis] for the bosses at the top of the pyramid.
6. Integrity- always doing the right thing, always acting consistently with one's philosophy, no matter what.
7. Justice. Justice, as Allison puts it, "means you're going to award superior performance and deal with nonperformance."
8. Pride. Allison puts it, pride is "the greatest of all virtues, because to have it you had to have all the others."
9. Self-Esteem. In the BB&T philosophy, pride is what you earn by living your values, and self-esteem is what you earn by doing excellent work.
10. Teamwork.

Source: I Am John Galt (2011) by Donald Luskin.

Good values to have in any business not just banks. Too bad the federal gov’t can’t some of these values. I would be satisfied with values 1), 2), 5) (especially the no exception part) & 6).

As a side note, in 2008 because of TARP Allison was forced to give substantial control of the bank to the U.S. government. Not because the bank was failing, but because it was succeeding. BB&T had made no subprime mortgage loans. It had 30,000 employees and over $150 billion in assets, making it the 12th largest U.S. bank.

My analysis is this: The gov’t thought even though it wasn’t failing it could fail in the near future. And we, the Fed, can’t allow that. After all it was too big too allow to fail. What this shows is a lack of trust the gov’t has in the free-market system. And yet Washington wants the citizens to completely trust them. Well, trust has to be earned.