United States
In the United States, the term "national bank" originally referred to the revolutionary era Bank of North America, later, First Bank of the United States, or its successor the Second Bank of the United States. All are now defunct.
In the modern U.S. the term "national bank" has a precise meaning: a banking institution chartered and supervised by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency ("OCC"), an agency in the U.S. Treasury Department, pursuant to the National Bank Act. The inclusion of the word "National" in the bank's name or the designation "National Association" or its abbreviation "N.A." is a required part of the distinguishing legal title of a national bank, as in "Citibank, N.A." Many "state banks", by contrast, are chartered by the applicable state government (usually the state's department of banking). The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insures deposits at both national and state banks.
The advantage of a National Bank Act charter is that a national bank is not subject to state usury laws intended to prevent predatory lending. (However, see also Cuomo v. Clearing House Association, L. L. C., stating that federal banking regulations do not preempt the ability of states to enforce their own fair-lending laws.) There is currently no federal cap on rates. The federal government only requires that whatever rates, fees or terms are set by issuers be disclosed to the consumer in accordance with the Truth in Lending Act.
Notwithstanding the name, not all "national banks" have nationwide operations. Some "national banks" have operations in only one city, county, or state. "National banks" should also be distinguished from federal savings associations (which include federal savings and loans, and federal savings banks, FSB), which are financial institutions chartered by the Office of Thrift Supervision, another agency in the U.S. Treasury Department which was dismembered by the 112th Congress and merged with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on July 21, 2011. The Federal Reserve is the United States' central bank.
Read more about this topic: National Bank
Famous quotes related to united states:
“You may consider me presumptuous, gentlemen, but I claim to be a citizen of the United States, with all the qualifications of a voter. I can read the Constitution, I am possessed of two hundred and fifty dollars, and the last time I looked in the old family Bible I found I was over twenty-one years of age.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1816–1902)
“What chiefly distinguishes the daily press of the United States from the press of all other countries is not its lack of truthfulness or even its lack of dignity and honor, for these deficiencies are common to the newspapers everywhere, but its incurable fear of ideas, its constant effort to evade the discussion of fundamentals by translating all issues into a few elemental fears, its incessant reduction of all reflection to mere emotion. It is, in the true sense, never well-informed.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“The United States is not a nation to which peace is a necessity.”
—Grover Cleveland (1837–1908)
“In the United States adherence to the values of the masculine mystique makes intimate, self-revealing, deep friendships between men unusual.”
—Myriam Miedzian, U.S. author. Boys Will Be Boys, introduction (1991)
“It was evident that, both on account of the feudal system and the aristocratic government, a private man was not worth so much in Canada as in the United States; and, if your wealth in any measure consists in manliness, in originality and independence, you had better stay here. How could a peaceable, freethinking man live neighbor to the Forty-ninth Regiment? A New-Englander would naturally be a bad citizen, probably a rebel, there,—certainly if he were already a rebel at home.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)