America's North Shore Journal

Reports from places that do not vote Demo­c­rat seem to sug­gest that local banks are in much bet­ter shape than the media and Con­gress would have you believe. This is what CNB has to say on their web site:

As with any busi­ness, banks need access to credit. Com­mer­cial com­mu­nity bank­ing is a busi­ness of inter­me­di­a­tion. That is, we gather the deposits from peo­ple we know and make loans to peo­ple we know. We recy­cle the dol­lars depos­i­tors place in our bank into loans to busi­ness and indi­vid­u­als to carry out pro­duc­tive pur­poses: grow­ing a busi­ness or buy­ing a home or car right in the com­mu­ni­ties where we live, work and play.

At the end of each day, we bal­ance our Bank’s bal­ance sheet. We total our loans and invest­ments (assets). We total our deposits and equity (lia­bil­i­ties and cap­i­tal). If the assets exceed the lia­bil­i­ties and cap­i­tal, we buy (bor­row) the dif­fer­ence from the overnight credit mar­ket. In the oppo­site case, we sell (lend) funds into the overnight credit mar­ket. On any given day, we gen­er­ally buy or sell between $20 mil­lion and $50 million.

Just as we reg­u­larly advise our cus­tomers to, we main­tain access to reserves for a “rainy day.” Over the last decade we have taken con­scious steps to increase our access to credit (reserves). Our prin­ci­pal credit sources are the Fed­eral Home Loan Bank of New York (FHLB) and the Fed­eral Reserve Bank of New York (FRB). With both of these banks, we have estab­lished secured lines of credit. To the FHLB, we pledge your mort­gage loans, and with this pledg­ing have access to $100 mil­lion in overnight funds. With addi­tional col­lat­eral, we can bor­row another $100 mil­lion. To the FRB, we pledge your auto­mo­bile loans, and with this pledg­ing we have access to over $125 mil­lion. Thus, we have access to over $325 mil­lion in credit should we need it, or about eight times our aver­age daily bor­row­ing needs. Mea­sured another way, this $325 mil­lion is about one quar­ter of all deposits in our Bank. By any mea­sure, we have more than suf­fi­cient access to credit to pro­vide you the loans you need and sup­port your deposits as you clear your checks. Thank you for bank­ing with The Canandaigua National Bank and Trust Company.

Lawrence A. Heil­bron­ner, Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent and Chief Finan­cial Officer