Transcript

00;00;00;08 – 00;00;25;19
Marty Carpenter
Utah’s economy runs on more than just ideas. It runs on the quiet, often unglamorous work of bankers. Money is the lifeblood of the economy, and for nearly 30 years, one man has been the voice of the people who move it. He has led the Utah Bankers Association since 1997, navigating every financial crisis, every regulatory wave. And now a moment where the very definition of money is changing.

00;00;25;22 – 00;00;47;24
Marty Carpenter
Stablecoins, AI, digital assets. The future of banking is arriving fast, and Utah banks are being asked to run toward it, not away from it. My guest today is the president and CEO of the Utah Bankers Association, one of Utah’s 100 most influential people. A member of the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square. And and I’m going to ask him about this.

00;00;47;27 – 00;00;57;21
Marty Carpenter
A man who may have to decide where his hockey allegiance now belongs. Coming up on back channel, we go off script and on record with Howard Headley.

00;01;13;29 – 00;01;17;00
Marty Carpenter
Yeah. We don’t have an intro. We just jump in and get going, so.

00;01;17;05 – 00;01;20;04
Howard Headlee
I prefer that. Yeah. Podcast. You win.

00;01;20;07 – 00;01;23;17
Marty Carpenter
You went full octane Diet Coke.

00;01;23;19 – 00;01;24;06
Howard Headlee
And that’s good.

00;01;24;07 – 00;01;26;03
Marty Carpenter
And we won’t tell people how early in the morning.

00;01;26;04 – 00;01;26;25
Howard Headlee
We’re.

00;01;26;28 – 00;01;28;02
Marty Carpenter
We’re diving in already.

00;01;28;02 – 00;01;28;28
Howard Headlee
With our first soda.

00;01;28;29 – 00;01;30;25
Marty Carpenter
Of the day, but nothing could be more Utah.

00;01;31;01 – 00;01;31;26
Howard Headlee
It’s very helpful.

00;01;31;28 – 00;01;36;27
Marty Carpenter
Yeah. You’ve been with the Bankers Association for a long time. Tell me how long you’ve been there.

00;01;36;29 – 00;01;38;00
Howard Headlee
30 years.

00;01;38;07 – 00;01;40;19
Marty Carpenter
Is that amazing to you when you start to think 30 years?

00;01;40;21 – 00;01;58;23
Howard Headlee
Yeah. First of all, it doesn’t seem like very long, but then it seems like a long time. Maybe. Just depends on how you’re looking at it. But never thought I’d do it for 30 years. Yeah, but there’s always a challenge. There’s always. Sometimes a crisis, and there’s just a never ending list of things to do.

00;01;58;23 – 00;02;22;29
Marty Carpenter
So does it ever make you laugh when you think about, like, what were banks like when you started at the Bankers Association? Like far less electronic. No. Internet banking? No. None of that. Maybe 30 years. You go back to 1996? Yeah, 96, 97. I mean, paper deposits, lifts, things like that. Like a banking has changed a whole lot, not just on the policies, but just the way people interact with banks.

00;02;23;06 – 00;02;48;15
Howard Headlee
Yeah, yeah, the interaction is obviously I think the biggest change, the policies fundamentally are the same. They had to adapt for these these new innovations. But the interaction is is what’s fascinating. And it’s just always more right people. Oh we’re going to have ATMs and we’re not going to need the branches. Some people even like closed down their drive up windows and then they had to reopen them.

00;02;48;15 – 00;03;08;24
Howard Headlee
I mean, you never eliminate any channel. You just add channels with ATMs. And then you went to online banking, then mobile banking, and you just keep adding them. And so when I hear people say, oh, you know, this is going to happen and it’s going to change it, you know, it’s like, not really. It’ll be new, but it won’t fundamentally change it.

00;03;08;25 – 00;03;23;21
Marty Carpenter
It’s funny you mentioned the vacuum tubes, right? That’s like the one thing that hasn’t changed with banking my entire life. I remember being a little kid and running to the bank with, like, my mom and having the vacuum tube kind of go back and forth over it. So how’d you get into the banking world? Like, is that what you went to school for?

00;03;23;21 – 00;03;28;11
Marty Carpenter
And thought, I’m going to go run the Bankers Association someday? I’m guessing the answer to that is no, no.

00;03;28;17 – 00;03;36;18
Howard Headlee
No, I not at all. I mean, banking to me was what banking was to you as the vacuum tubes in the suckers, you know, and.

00;03;36;22 – 00;03;39;07
Marty Carpenter
Oh, I can’t forget the soccer. That’s a great part of the bankers.

00;03;39;09 – 00;04;07;26
Howard Headlee
Yeah. One of my favorite things that I did. But we created some specialty suckers for banks in Utah, which was they were very tasty. But no, I, I was like most everybody else, you know, went to college, didn’t know what I wanted to do. I, I majored in accounting because it was my worst subject, you know, and I figured, well, I better figure this out if I’m going to go into business.

00;04;07;28 – 00;04;35;04
Howard Headlee
And BYU had like one of the accounting school in the country. So I figured, well, if I want to pay the tuition, might as well get the best degree. But then I found myself working in accounting and I was miserable, right? It wasn’t my best subject. The school there was amazing and prepared me incredibly well. I, I was, you know, performing really well and being promoted, but I, I wasn’t yeah, I wasn’t going to be an accountant.

00;04;35;08 – 00;04;55;25
Howard Headlee
I mean there’s very important but it wasn’t who I was, I was I mean, I, I was played in a rock band, you know, when I tell people I was I majored in accounting, they just look at me like. You did what? No. So, yeah, I was I was a 80s rock, you know, fanatic.

00;04;55;26 – 00;05;03;14
Marty Carpenter
Well, paint the picture for us on that. What instrument did you play and tell us about the costume that went along with that? Oh, because it’s the 80s. The big.

00;05;03;14 – 00;05;19;12
Howard Headlee
Hair, the ripped jeans, the ponytail, the. I played keyboards and it was a lead vocalist, which is always awkward, right? Because you’re behind a keyboard, but you’re the lead vocalist. You got to connect with the audience. So you remember those axes.

00;05;19;13 – 00;05;21;18
Marty Carpenter
The keytar. You’re a guitarist.

00;05;21;19 – 00;05;25;02
Howard Headlee
They’re so ridiculous. I never did that.

00;05;25;03 – 00;05;33;19
Marty Carpenter
I know I’ve got a clear picture now. Ponytail, ripped jeans and a guitar. That’s. No, I never did.

00;05;33;21 – 00;05;41;18
Howard Headlee
But when I when I did that, I would just leave the keyboard all entirely and, you know, go into the, the drunken masses. Yeah.

00;05;41;22 – 00;05;43;26
Marty Carpenter
Singing what was the name of your band?

00;05;43;28 – 00;05;51;00
Howard Headlee
Oh, we had a number of names. The one that probably intensive care. Nice was.

00;05;51;01 – 00;05;51;22
Marty Carpenter
Intensive care.

00;05;51;23 – 00;05;57;23
Howard Headlee
And we had. Yeah, cool shirts with, like, a heartbeat. You know, the EKG thing on the front of it.

00;05;57;24 – 00;05;59;13
Marty Carpenter
Very nice. Intensive care.

00;05;59;14 – 00;06;01;05
Howard Headlee
I love perfect 80s.

00;06;01;08 – 00;06;08;14
Marty Carpenter
Did you and Governor Huntsman ever connect on this? Because he played keyboards in a band called Wizard? Yes. And I’m picturing kind of the same thing.

00;06;08;16 – 00;06;35;04
Howard Headlee
I’m just offended he never asked me to sing, and I think he was just protective of being the keyboardist in the band. But we’ve talked a lot about our our band days, and, you know, it’s been great. You know, my, my history and music, starting from classical piano, classical voice into rock and roll, pop and then rock and roll and then vocal jazz and then the Tabernacle Choir.

00;06;35;04 – 00;06;45;05
Howard Headlee
And, you know, it’s kind of the full gamut. I, I just retired from the Tabernacle Choir, and it’s like, I did it all. I did it all. I feel really good about it.

00;06;45;07 – 00;06;58;07
Marty Carpenter
So I want to get to the Tabernacle Choir in just a minute. But it feels like we’re talking about sort of two sides of your brain that work impressively well, because I think of music on completely opposite end of the brain spectrum than accounting.

00;06;58;10 – 00;07;20;03
Howard Headlee
Yeah, but that’s why I majored in the counting, because it was like, I, I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to understand this and I’ve got to nail this. So I majored in accounting. I went to work for KPMG, which was one of the largest accounting firms in the world. And interestingly, I audited banks. And so that’s kind of where I started my interaction with Bank.

00;07;20;04 – 00;07;23;22
Howard Headlee
I’ve never worked for a bank. Technically, I work.

00;07;23;22 – 00;07;23;29
Marty Carpenter
For.

00;07;23;29 – 00;07;24;07
Howard Headlee
All.

00;07;24;07 – 00;07;24;29
Marty Carpenter
The banks.

00;07;25;01 – 00;07;49;26
Howard Headlee
But I’ve never worked in a bank doing the banking thing. But I how I got into this job was pretty much running away from accounting. I was after a few years in accounting, I was like, I’ve got to do something else. So I went to MBA school just to kind of reset and and to figure out what I would really enjoy doing.

00;07;49;26 – 00;08;01;02
Howard Headlee
And during MBA school, I took an internship at the state Capitol, and I. And I’m going to say this for the first time in a public setting.

00;08;01;02 – 00;08;02;24
Marty Carpenter
Breaking news.

00;08;02;26 – 00;08;32;29
Howard Headlee
In accounting. Those people who work in accounting understand in January what happens in accounting world, we have to go out and inventory assets, every every business has to determine these are my assets as of January 1st. And somebody has to go out and and document those. So I had some of the most interesting inventories assignments like one was the big cement pipes that go under the streets and infrastructure.

00;08;33;01 – 00;08;59;24
Howard Headlee
I spent probably four weeks in the middle of January climbing around a huge yard full of cement pipes, inspect, counting them and inspecting them to make sure that they weren’t cracked, that they were still usable, and I had to account for every pipe on this yard in the middle of January in Detroit, Michigan. It was it was brutal.

00;08;59;25 – 00;09;35;25
Howard Headlee
So I had a number of just brutal accounting, you know, inventory experiences. So I’m rapidly approaching January in MBA school, knowing that KPMG, who I still worked for technically were going to call me with the absolute worst inventory assignment that no one else in the office wanted to do. And so I said, I better have an answer. So I took an internship up at the Capitol so I could say, oh, I’m sorry, I can’t do that because I’ve seen this internship at the Capitol.

00;09;35;28 – 00;09;41;26
Howard Headlee
I took it literally to avoid a nasty inventory.

00;09;41;29 – 00;09;42;11
Marty Carpenter
Just to have.

00;09;42;11 – 00;09;43;04
Howard Headlee
An assignment.

00;09;43;04 – 00;09;43;08
Marty Carpenter
For.

00;09;43;08 – 00;10;11;02
Howard Headlee
A while. Yeah. And and I loved it. I loved the policy, especially on taxes. My dad was massively involved in the state of Michigan and tax policy. He amended the Michigan state constitution for tax limitation back in the in 78, when the tax limitation proposals were running around the nation. Prop 13 in California, we had the Headley Amendment in Michigan.

00;10;11;02 – 00;10;35;25
Howard Headlee
And it was written actually by Milton Friedman and Milton Friedman and my dad were friends. And and he asked my dad to run this amendment in Michigan as a kind of a test. And it was a great proposal. And it passed. It was it was the first time the Michigan Constitution of Michigan had been amended by a signature petition drive.

00;10;35;25 – 00;10;52;04
Howard Headlee
And and it literally saved the Michigan economy. Most people will say this. The Headley Amendment was the thing that saved the Michigan economy when they lost so much, because it right sized government forced the government to to adjust.

00;10;52;06 – 00;10;57;15
Marty Carpenter
Tell us more about your dad because we haven’t touched on that at all. Like what did he do? And oh.

00;10;57;17 – 00;11;23;15
Howard Headlee
My dad. He ran George Romney’s presidential campaign in 1968. It’s kind of the that’s right after I was born. So that’s kind of the first thing I remember. So he ran that campaign in 68. He ran this campaign to amend the Michigan Constitution. He ran for governor of Michigan in 1982, and his opponent wouldn’t debate him. I was 18, I was in high school.

00;11;23;17 – 00;11;53;15
Howard Headlee
His opponent wouldn’t debate him. So I became his opponent would send somebody to debate and my dad would send me. So for about six months, I was the guy that engaged in the debates with usually state senators, congressmen, the candidate for, you know, lieutenant governor. So it was a great political experience for me. But again, my background with my dad was on tax policy.

00;11;53;15 – 00;12;22;12
Howard Headlee
So going and taking an internship with the Utah Taxpayers Association was, it turned out in retrospect, to be this perfect fit for me. And it got me out of the inventories with KPMG. So I started on doing that during my MBA, and I just kept doing that. Howard Stevenson, who was the head of the Taxpayers Association at the time, decided to run for the state Senate and he won.

00;12;22;12 – 00;12;49;14
Howard Headlee
So during the session, he had to be senator from Draper and me, the new guy at the Taxpayers Association was thrust into this leadership role right out of the chute, which was now, looking back, very rare. I was 30 years old, 28 years old and and basically playing a lead lobby role for one of the more influential lobbyists in the state.

00;12;49;14 – 00;13;06;06
Marty Carpenter
So it sounds like you were accustomed to that, you kind of getting pushed into the spotlight or pushed into the leadership role early, because I can imagine there are a few people, there are a few of us around who would say, man, there’s nothing more fun than getting into a debate where there’s nothing more fun than being in the spotlight.

00;13;06;06 – 00;13;20;27
Marty Carpenter
But at 18, I don’t know if I would have said, I’m ready to go debate. You know, a state senator or someone running for lieutenant governor did think back to that time, like, how did you react to that? You’re just like, well, my dad said, I got to do it, so I got to do it. Or were you excited about it?

00;13;20;28 – 00;13;22;01
Marty Carpenter
Nervous?

00;13;22;03 – 00;13;41;26
Howard Headlee
Yeah, I loved it. I mean, it was it was it was it was easy because you’re the 18 year old. Yeah. No expectations. I could pretty much say or do anything in the audience would respond. It was it was torture for the the opponent. Yeah. This young guy, everybody was rooting for me.

00;13;42;01 – 00;13;48;14
Marty Carpenter
I guess if they go too hard against you, they look like a bully. And you can throw haymakers. And if you land one, it’s awesome, right?

00;13;48;15 – 00;14;11;07
Howard Headlee
Exactly. It was not fair by any means, but it was great, great background for me. But it was it was brutal. Michigan politics was was was not pleasant. You know, we had troopers living in our home driving us everywhere. Our house was evacuated in the middle of the night for bomb threats. I mean, it was it’s a it’s a tough place.

00;14;11;07 – 00;14;18;21
Howard Headlee
Jimmy Hoffa was abducted like, a mile from my house, you know? So it’s a different environment. And after that, was.

00;14;18;21 – 00;14;22;02
Marty Carpenter
This in the Detroit area? Did you live in the Detroit area or Lansing or were?

00;14;22;03 – 00;14;38;11
Howard Headlee
No, no, I was just in the suburbs of Detroit. And after that campaign, I had pretty much had it. Yeah, it was it was brutal. It was brutal on the family. People don’t understand how hard these campaigns are for the members of the family.

00;14;38;12 – 00;14;42;15
Marty Carpenter
Even the easy ones are hard on the family. The tough ones are even more so.

00;14;42;16 – 00;15;05;22
Howard Headlee
This was Reagan’s off year. This was when inflation and interest rates were in the 18% area. It was brutal and we lost that race by about three three percentage points. And emotionally and we went to bed that non election. I think if we had one then of course, you know Detroit vote came in late and we had lost.

00;15;05;22 – 00;15;30;19
Howard Headlee
So this whole debate about election integrity goes back decades for me. And there are real issues there. There were real issues there. But, you know, my dad losing that race was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Number one, he made most of his money after that. So my kids and grandkids are excited that he lost in number two.

00;15;30;26 – 00;15;40;03
Howard Headlee
I left Michigan, I was going to go to University of Michigan. I’m a Wolverine fan. You know how to house state a Red wings fan, you know that.

00;15;40;10 – 00;15;41;18
Marty Carpenter
We’ll talk more about that.

00;15;41;21 – 00;16;08;14
Howard Headlee
But suffering Lions fan. But they’ve gotten better. But it I left Michigan as a refugee. I was like I’m out of here. I don’t know how I got into BYU. I got into BYU in January. I never I can’t even remember applying to BYU. It was just the election was over in November and we lost. And I wasn’t going to go to University of Michigan and walk around in that environment.

00;16;08;14 – 00;16;33;02
Howard Headlee
And so I just left town and I came out to BYU year and and just fell in love with it. I mean, holy mackerel, the weather here is better. The mountains are spectacular. I tried to go back to Michigan and work at KPMG, and it just I married a girl from California. She wasn’t going to have it. She didn’t wasn’t a big Tigers fan.

00;16;33;03 – 00;16;43;07
Howard Headlee
So we we ended up I wasn’t going to California. No way I was going to go to California. So I said, well, let’s go back to Utah and try to make a life of it there.

00;16;43;07 – 00;16;49;18
Marty Carpenter
So Michigan seems like an okay place to go visit in the summer and then not want to be there in the winter. So I’m with her on this.

00;16;49;20 – 00;16;54;11
Howard Headlee
The fall is great. I mean, fall is probably my favorite football season. It’s awesome.

00;16;54;17 – 00;17;01;12
Marty Carpenter
But but by about Thanksgiving, you can skip it for the next 3 or 4 months. Nothing. Yeah. That’s fascinating.

00;17;01;13 – 00;17;03;02
Howard Headlee
I want to argue with the.

00;17;03;04 – 00;17;21;13
Marty Carpenter
I want to talk a little bit about banking. Just it’s a passion of yours, right? I mean, 30 years someplace. You know a lot about the banking world. You’ve written that most people don’t realize the balances in their savings and checking accounts are the most powerful force in the economy. Tell me why it is that. That’s true from your perspective?

00;17;21;13 – 00;17;36;13
Marty Carpenter
Because I don’t think most people think about, I don’t know, I just put my money there so I can, and most of us don’t even physically take a check anymore somewhere, right? It’s just a bunch of numbers that move back and forth on a computer. But why is it the most powerful force in the economy? These deposits and withdrawals?

00;17;36;14 – 00;18;00;18
Howard Headlee
Well, rightly so. What people are most concerned about is where’s my money? Is it safe? Do I have access to it? Easy. You know, can I see how much I have and keeping track of it? That’s what people want. There’s all kinds of really nifty tools today to help that, especially fintech and stuff like that. Mobile banking. But it’s what’s happening with your money while it’s there and you’re not using it.

00;18;00;22 – 00;18;23;27
Howard Headlee
That is what actually drives the US economy. I mean, people talk about where the greatest economy on Earth and so forth. That that’s that money that drives that. So when you talk about where you put your money, it’s it’s important that you know how to access it and where it’s at. And you feel safe that it’s there. It’s insured.

00;18;23;28 – 00;18;45;21
Howard Headlee
I mean, banking is important that way, no question. But you should also ask the question, what are you doing with it when I’m not using it? That’s a really, really important question. So you may find some cool app where you can put your balance and you can do something nifty with it. And people say, I like that. That’s what I do with it.

00;18;45;22 – 00;19;16;27
Howard Headlee
Okay, well what’s happening with that when you’re not using it? Where are they? There. They’re investing it somewhere. They’re making a loan to a business. You probably ought to know what they’re doing with it. And to the extent you’re concerned about your local economy and jobs and, you know, in your state or your local community, that’s really important that people think about that, because it is what drives that.

00;19;17;00 – 00;19;37;27
Howard Headlee
And that’s why I’ve been at it for 30 years. I did not know this going into this job. And once I learned I’m like, holy, this is really important. This is how everything happens. I mean, what people, people talk about the fed printing money, that’s not what happens. It’s not what happens. Banks make loans. You. We create money, we create.

00;19;37;28 – 00;19;40;10
Howard Headlee
They give us the power to create money.

00;19;40;11 – 00;19;53;18
Marty Carpenter
Because it essentially, if I understand this and correct me if I’m off base here, but it essentially magically doubles the money when we go put it into savings. I give you $1,000. You have $1,000 that I have access to.

00;19;53;24 – 00;19;56;04
Howard Headlee
You never lose your 1000 bucks.

00;19;56;07 – 00;19;58;07
Marty Carpenter
And it’s protected. But.

00;19;58;13 – 00;20;06;22
Howard Headlee
Right. I set up a reserve and I can lend that thousand dollars to this business. Well, now there’s $2,000.

00;20;06;23 – 00;20;10;08
Marty Carpenter
There’s not $1,000. And it’s all the same thousand dollars to.

00;20;10;08 – 00;20;32;29
Howard Headlee
Start with. And if it’s a good loan and they pay it back, right. It’s like you can see how this grows in, you know, with the Covid, the pandemic, it’s where this really became evident. The government structured this their response in the form of these Peep loans, these forgivable loans. And I was like, why are we. Why are we doing this?

00;20;33;00 – 00;20;52;26
Howard Headlee
I mean, and now you understand what’s happening is that the banks are lending this money out. It’s being forgiven. It just created a ton. Those loans created a ton of money in the economy. And that’s what we’re dealing with, inflationary wise. I mean, that money is still there. It doesn’t just disappear.

00;20;52;27 – 00;20;54;11
Marty Carpenter
Everybody didn’t just bring it back.

00;20;54;14 – 00;21;11;25
Howard Headlee
Yeah they don’t. Yeah. Because as soon as they bring it back, it’s sitting at the bank and we have these deposits. What do we have to do with those deposits. We have to make a loan. If we just sat on deposits, we’d collapse it. Just because we’re paying you money on your deposit, we have to be earning money on that deposit.

00;21;11;25 – 00;21;32;29
Howard Headlee
So we have to go out and make good loans. So the peop in those deposits really just lit a fire under the banks. We had to go out and work to get the money deployed in the economy in a, in a rational, safe way. And the bankers were amazing. They were amazing in that crisis.

00;21;33;00 – 00;21;51;01
Marty Carpenter
It’s such an interesting idea. The idea like I put in the deposits and it doubles the money. I think it speaks a little bit to the to the lack of understanding. Most people, just broadly the general public has in how money works. I mean, we’ve we’ve sort of focused on financial literacy in Utah schools, but that’s sort of here’s the money you have.

00;21;51;02 – 00;22;08;18
Marty Carpenter
Here’s how you balance a checkbook. Not that anyone does that with the checkbook, how you balance your account and such. But I noticed this this week. We as we’re recording this, we just had the IPO for space. And you’ve got some people going, wow, this is amazing. And then you have other people going, I can’t believe this guy has $1 trillion.

00;22;08;18 – 00;22;26;26
Marty Carpenter
And I think the problem is they think of it like Scrooge McDuck, that he’s just swimming in $1 trillion as if he has it in a bank, like in a in a vault somewhere. And not just that he’s worth $1 trillion, but most of that is out kind of in the same way you’re talking about. It’s out doing things.

00;22;26;26 – 00;22;50;06
Marty Carpenter
It’s out growing value and paying people and investing on research and development, all these things that happen. It’s not like, you know, when people love to villains, billionaires, they’re not walking around with $1 billion in their pocket. Do you feel that sense of frustration a little bit? Sometimes you hear people talk about whether it’s something like space or if it’s just even the economy generally that like, well, we just print money is one of the things you said.

00;22;50;08 – 00;22;53;21
Marty Carpenter
Does it frustrate you that sometimes people don’t get what’s really happening?

00;22;53;22 – 00;23;19;08
Howard Headlee
Yeah, because we all benefit from people who take risks and create value. That’s what it’s all about taking risks and creating value. No one got rich without taking a risk and creating a value for somebody. We know we have these phones. I mean this you create something that someone’s willing to pay money for because they value it, and they took a risk to do that.

00;23;19;09 – 00;23;44;05
Howard Headlee
I mean, and bankers do that at a very minimal level. I mean, mostly what we get criticized for is banks don’t take enough risk. I went and tried to get a loan from my bank. They wouldn’t give me a loan. They don’t understand the money that we’re dealing. We’re dealing with money that people expect back. How much risk are you willing to take with your $1,000 deposit?

00;23;44;11 – 00;24;09;20
Howard Headlee
No. It’s none. It’s insured deposit. None. And so because it’s guaranteed, it’s insured to you. We’re limited in how much risk that we can take with that. Now, when someone gives Elon Musk, you know, $1,000 for a share of stock, they’re taking a lot more risk. They’re not guaranteed. And they realize this is going up in rockets and they blow up sometimes or whatever.

00;24;09;22 – 00;24;40;27
Howard Headlee
There’s there’s that risk when it comes to banks. We take our risks. That we take is tied to the risks that you as a depositor are willing to take with that money. This is the lowest risk on that totem pole of risk in value. Banks are at that lowest risk, which is hard, right? It’s like we have to be very, very, very careful with the loans that we make.

00;24;40;29 – 00;24;58;29
Howard Headlee
At the same time, the cost of that funding is the lowest. So every business wants a bank loan because they pay the lowest amount of interest on the bank loan. That just means that you have achieved a level of risk.

00;24;59;01 – 00;25;27;26
Howard Headlee
You’ve you as a as a businessman, have managed your risk so well that I can lend you money that Marty’s relying on back and everybody’s trying to get to that point, even space. Right. That’s very expensive money that they just got. Those people are looking for massive returns that are taking pretty significant risk. It’s some juncture. Space wants to just go out and get a low cost bank loan.

00;25;28;01 – 00;25;31;21
Howard Headlee
They’re going to have to manage a lot of risk to get to that point.

00;25;31;22 – 00;25;38;07
Marty Carpenter
And they’re essentially saying with an IPO, give us your money and we’re going to go help this thing go from here to here, and everyone gets a return on it.

00;25;38;11 – 00;26;05;28
Howard Headlee
But people do need to understand this better because nothing just happens. First of all, no one’s stealing anything. I mean, this notion that billionaire is a billionaire because he stole something. That’s that’s ridiculous. He created value somewhere that people were willing to pay for. It took on some risk and manage that risk effectively. That’s how you make money?

00;26;06;01 – 00;26;29;17
Marty Carpenter
Yeah. I saw a tweet over the weekend that said, I know how Elon Musk became a trillionaire. I don’t understand how the senators and congressmen who are railing against him became millionaires, right? Talking about not creating value necessarily. That’s the part, I think, that frustrates a lot of people. But you get this division because some people just love it and some people are very much against it.

00;26;29;17 – 00;26;57;23
Marty Carpenter
And, you know, you and I both know generally all for their own benefit. This is an interesting time because I was thinking about how much banking has changed, not just sort of in the everyday application of it, but some of the outside forces that it faces right now. And I think of like stablecoins and digital assets, deregulation, AI legislation, all of this stuff that’s always coming at banks who are sort of trying to do the same fundamental thing they did when it was cash and paper receipts.

00;26;57;25 – 00;27;12;07
Marty Carpenter
So let’s just talk through some of those. I wonder, just give me an idea. What what are digital assets stablecoin. Bitcoin cryptocurrency. How does all that right now impact the banking community. How are you guys looking generally at that.

00;27;12;09 – 00;27;19;17
Howard Headlee
Well it’s an asset like any other asset. The question you know you have to evaluate what value.

00;27;19;18 – 00;27;20;08
Marty Carpenter
To.

00;27;20;10 – 00;27;46;24
Howard Headlee
Give to it and the risk and that I think that is that’s why it’s so important to understand what we just talked about. Because fundamentally that doesn’t change. Fundamentally risks have to be managed. And bankers are incredibly that’s what we do. That’s what they’re really good at. And so whether it’s digital assets, stablecoin, blockchain, AI or those are just components to that process.

00;27;46;24 – 00;28;16;22
Howard Headlee
But ultimately you have to follow certain rules and manage risk. You saw with Sam Bankman-Fried we watched that play out and we’re like, guys, they’re acting like this is some kind of revolutionary new thing, when in reality the fundamentals of it were all the same. There’s just no rules around it. So now Congress has adopted rules around and saying, oh no, you can’t take money from Marty and buy your mama house with it.

00;28;16;22 – 00;28;21;09
Howard Headlee
And it’s like, that’s that’s never been the case.

00;28;21;15 – 00;28;24;03
Marty Carpenter
Is that tied back to the genius act what you’re describing?

00;28;24;04 – 00;28;26;23
Howard Headlee
The genius act is a big part of that.

00;28;26;26 – 00;28;29;27
Marty Carpenter
Just give us an idea of what that is. Basic rule six.

00;28;29;28 – 00;28;36;08
Howard Headlee
So if if you give me $1 million and I give you a stablecoin which is something electronic.

00;28;36;11 – 00;28;37;01
Marty Carpenter
A digital.

00;28;37;01 – 00;29;06;11
Howard Headlee
Currency, a digital coin, I have, what do I do with your million dollars so that if you ever come back and say, hey, you know what, I’m going to turn in my digital asset, my stablecoin, and I want my $1 million back that that it’s there, right? That’s what it’s all about. And it’s there. So the genius act says, okay, you have to take the million and you have to put it in a safe, liquid asset, and it has to be there and sit there safely.

00;29;06;13 – 00;29;25;04
Howard Headlee
So when Mati wants it back, or maybe Mati gives it to ten people later, they say, we’re going to catch that out. Yeah, we like that money back. It has to maintain its value. Otherwise when you give it to somebody, they don’t know if it really means anything. So that’s what the genius act kind of creates that structure.

00;29;25;04 – 00;29;49;11
Howard Headlee
But it’s still kind of well, it’s a good first step. I’m not going to criticize it, but it’s nothing like what we do at banks. We’re reconciling to the fed every day. I mean, it’s an ongoing process. This is like a 30 day window, but at least it’s not Sam Bankman-Fried. It’s at least it’s not. You get to take that money and buy houses in the Cayman Islands for your mom.

00;29;49;13 – 00;30;27;29
Howard Headlee
But it’s a. It’s a useful tool to make payments. This is what we’re debating about right now. People need to understand I can use Marti’s million dollars as a deposit in the bank. To make $1 million loan to a local business that’s going to build something. And we just created a 2 million. Now there’s $2 million working like we talked about, where I can give you a stable coin, a payment stablecoin, which becomes this tool that moves around, and you can buy inventory from China with it.

00;30;27;29 – 00;30;52;09
Howard Headlee
And it’s a lot easier. But that then sits in US government treasuries in an account. So I can either fund economic development in my community or I can fund the federal debt. That’s the decision Congress is making today. And what people are saying is we love stablecoin and we want to facilitate stablecoin. And bankers are fighting back against stablecoin.

00;30;52;10 – 00;31;16;29
Howard Headlee
That’s really not true because we’re going to be engaged. We’re going to be issuing stablecoin. We’re going to be engaged in this. But the question is, what does your money do when it’s sitting there? Is it working to build our local economy and is it financing the federal government debt? And that’s a policy decision that Congress has to make right now, which will affect everybody.

00;31;16;29 – 00;31;24;16
Howard Headlee
Everybody listening to this is going to be affected by that, because it’ll either make loans easier to get or harder to get.

00;31;24;18 – 00;31;26;12
Marty Carpenter
Which do you think it’ll be?

00;31;26;15 – 00;31;51;14
Howard Headlee
I think Congress is figuring out that this isn’t what they thought it was going in. And but at the same time, they’re spending more money than they have, and they have to figure out a way to finance the federal government debt. This is basic economy economics 101, where it’s the crowding out effect of government debt that whatever 3840 trillion in debt we have, it’s a problem.

00;31;51;16 – 00;32;03;23
Howard Headlee
It’s a problem. It has to be financed by somebody. And that money hand be used elsewhere. And and we’ve got to come to grips with that.

00;32;03;29 – 00;32;29;05
Marty Carpenter
Let’s talk about deregulation. The Trump administration has made some movements to deregulate the OCC, FDIC, the fed. They’ve all they’ve all moved to reduce burden on community banks. Is that actually making a difference on the ground in Utah yet will it eventually or have you seen it make the kind of changes you would like to make it have made it?

00;32;29;07 – 00;33;15;02
Howard Headlee
Well, it’s a really important thing because there’s a bigger picture here and we need we all should want more independent banks. When it comes down to it’s about allocating capital and we want more people independently making those decisions, kind of crowdsourcing those decisions, you know, decentralizing, democratizing the economy, so to speak, rather than a few big institutions. There are people in our policy world that want fewer, bigger banks because they know as policymakers they can control those in, you know, a few or bigger ones, right?

00;33;15;05 – 00;33;39;28
Howard Headlee
They can’t control 5000 banks all over the country making independent decisions. I’m going to give you a loan. I’m not going to give you a loan. You know, primarily based upon the finances of that loan. There are people who want to make that decision based upon their politics, and we cannot politicize banking. So I’m a big advocate of more banks, more decisions being made.

00;33;39;28 – 00;34;13;29
Howard Headlee
And that requires the the deregulation, because the Dowd Frank act, which was passed after the financial crisis, mostly punished small banks who had nothing to do with the crisis. It was it was the most ridiculous public policy response. And clearly Washington had more to blame in the financial crisis than any little bank anywhere. And in an attempt to push the blame, the people in Washington were appointing the finger in every direction, and the public responded.

00;34;14;00 – 00;34;46;00
Howard Headlee
You know, to this bank narrative. And in the end, we got more regulations on little banks, and we just saw them all just consolidating into the bigger banks. And we lost thousands of banks in terms of consolidation. The banks themselves were fine, but they couldn’t they couldn’t pay for that regulatory burden. And so had this big consolidation, which was bad for the economy, bad for the country, but it played into the hands of the people who wanted to centralize and politicize banking.

00;34;46;00 – 00;35;14;28
Howard Headlee
So we’ve got to move back in the other direction. And that’s what’s happening in a in a broader sense, AI is is really disappointing those central planners, because AI is the first time where we can take AI and apply it to these ridiculous regulations and have the AI comply with a lot of the ridiculous stuff in free up the banks to go back to doing what they do best.

00;35;14;28 – 00;35;21;08
Howard Headlee
So I’m really excited about AI because it’s a game changer when it comes to the regulatory burden.

00;35;21;16 – 00;35;41;29
Marty Carpenter
Is that its best application at this point for banking to say government has heaped all this regulation on us, even if the current administration is trying to deregulate, but there’s still a ton of regulation and it’s, in essence, busy work, right? Then you have to kind of check a bunch of boxes and you can tell an agent or a robot, go check those boxes while we get back to doing the work.

00;35;42;06 – 00;36;08;02
Howard Headlee
It’s stupid stuff. Yeah, it really a lot of some of it is really essential, but it’s hard to distinguish the essential from kind of the chat box checking. And so this this AI is just transformative. It’s not the only place, but it was the first easiest yeah, no brainer place to deploy it. And even the regulators are deploying it which is good to see.

00;36;08;09 – 00;36;27;23
Marty Carpenter
So on the positive side on AI, it helps you deal with government regulations that you wish you weren’t there anyway. But on the other side. Do you see some risk in things like cyber fraud, AI generated deepfakes? Are those sort of the biggest threats that AI poses to banking at this point, or is there something else we should know about?

00;36;27;25 – 00;36;53;16
Howard Headlee
No, I think that’s that’s a big threat. Fraud is a huge threat. And everybody needs you know, there’s it’s so hard. Everybody’s been touched by it. I mean, you have family members, I have family members that get scammed. And but AI on the other side is helping us fight back. Right. And and the blockchain and some of these other advancements are going to really help us identify, you know, how do I know your Marty?

00;36;53;16 – 00;37;21;26
Howard Headlee
And how do you know I’m Howard? And if you’re a bank and making loans and transferring money, these innovations are going to help us do that better and avoid the identity, you know, scams that are out there. So I’m very optimistic about the deployment of both AI and blockchain technology. And that will transform banking as we know it.

00;37;21;28 – 00;37;50;01
Howard Headlee
People have said it’s funny. They’ll say, oh, blockchain is the greatest thing, you know, and it’s going to it’s going to get rid of banks. And it’s like, no. To the extent that blockchain is going to benefit you, it’s that benefit is going to deliver to you probably by your bank that you trust and that that it understands these regulations, the ones that are necessary to to build that trust.

00;37;50;01 – 00;38;07;15
Howard Headlee
So and that’s what’s happening. Banks are applying the blockchain to make the banking process simpler and more efficient, lower cost, faster, more convenient. And and it’s all it’s all good. I mean it’s not and it’s not going to eliminate the banks.

00;38;07;17 – 00;38;31;28
Marty Carpenter
But we’ve talked primarily about federal regulations at this point or AI, which is sort of beyond state borders. But I’m wondering here in Utah where you do a lot of your policymaking work, a lot of your lobbying work with the state legislature, how would you rate Utah’s regulatory climate for for local banks, and what would you like to see change?

00;38;32;00 – 00;38;58;08
Howard Headlee
Well, rated is the best. I mean, in the market is speaking, right. That’s been my goal over 30 years, is to make Utah the best place to operate a bank. And we are now the fifth largest banking state. We’re the fastest growing banking state. Most people are surprised to hear that. But I mean, you have banks moving their charters to Utah.

00;38;58;10 – 00;39;27;01
Howard Headlee
I mean, son, West Bank came from California, moved their headquarters here so far. You know, one of the most innovative new entrants into banking, bought a bank in California and moved its headquarters to Utah lending club, one of the fintech innovators that partnered with the Utah Bank, bought a bank in Massachusetts, moved it here. So my goal is to make sure Utah is the best place from a regulatory policy standpoint to operate a bank.

00;39;27;02 – 00;39;53;13
Howard Headlee
And I you know, I would say we’re there and the markets are realizing that. And we’ve we’ve got a lot of new banks coming to town, banks that people aren’t aware of. I mean, in the last two months, we’ve had four General Motors, Stellantis, all approved. Edward Jones was approved in the last couple of months. So and there’s a whole range of folks PayPal’s in application for their bank here.

00;39;53;15 – 00;40;27;29
Howard Headlee
So it’s it’s a great spot. I give my hat’s off to our, our our legislators and our policy makers. They’ve been they’ve just been very responsive. They understand you can’t have the number one economy in the country without having a strong and in the strongest banking state. The two go together. And so they realize that the leadership has realized the governor and create an environment that’s been great for banking.

00;40;28;00 – 00;40;47;15
Howard Headlee
One thing I would change is just and there’s nothing that we can do about it. I mean, the federal government, you know, this credit union issue. Credit unions are great. We love credit unions are important part of the the ecosystem, you know, but there’s a couple of them that are they’re not credit unions anymore. There’s there’s no union there.

00;40;47;22 – 00;41;09;26
Howard Headlee
Right. They serve anybody. Everybody. They provide all the same services at banks. They look like banks. People refer to them as banks. When I talk to them, I say we’re already paying. Oh, bank of this credit union. It’s like, okay. They clearly don’t get that. The state legislature tried to solve that problem, but they can’t really deal with it until federal government gets their arms wrapped around it.

00;41;09;29 – 00;41;32;18
Howard Headlee
That’s the only the only thing. And it’s hurt the small credit unions and it’s hurt the small banks. When you get policy wrong, that’s what it yields. You’re picking winners and losers. You’re playing favorites. And the big get bigger and the small can’t compete. And that’s a bad market. So that’s something we you know we need to deal with at some point.

00;41;32;18 – 00;41;48;09
Howard Headlee
But in the meantime we just keep moving forward. The the technology, the AI, the blockchain. And it’s helping helping us become more efficient to deal with the places where the policy isn’t is efficient.

00;41;48;12 – 00;41;52;19
Marty Carpenter
All right. We’re almost out of time. So I want to move on and wrap up with a lightning round. Are you ready for that? Is there.

00;41;52;19 – 00;41;55;01
Howard Headlee
A lightning round? We get back to the.

00;41;55;02 – 00;42;02;06
Marty Carpenter
Faster rapid. Yeah, yeah. Lightning round would have been a good name for a band in the 80s. You guys should have been lightning.

00;42;02;07 – 00;42;05;07
Howard Headlee
Maybe I’ll go back to that. I don’t know.

00;42;05;09 – 00;42;05;19
Marty Carpenter
That’s the.

00;42;05;19 – 00;42;09;26
Howard Headlee
Next old guys who try to rock or can be kind of painful.

00;42;09;26 – 00;42;16;23
Marty Carpenter
To watch. Some guys have lost their fastball, and they. But they still like to cash the checks to keep deposits going into banks.

00;42;16;25 – 00;42;36;26
Howard Headlee
Kenny Loggins, we had him come up and perform at our convention a couple of years ago, and he was unbelievable, right? Because he sings really high for people who and, you know, highway to the Danger Zone. I mean, he and he was still rocking it. And I said, Kenny, as a singer, how do you do this at your age?

00;42;36;29 – 00;42;46;23
Howard Headlee
It’s a sensitive topic. But, you know, he, he, he shared with me what he does to stay there. And it’s not easy. You do lose the fastball. Once you lose it, it’s gone.

00;42;46;24 – 00;43;07;06
Marty Carpenter
Yeah. Some folks just haven’t been good to their voice and some a father. Time is undefeated, right? That’s the way it goes. I saw you two at the Sphere year or two ago, and I was like, yeah, this just this is just loud to hide the fact that you don’t still quite have the vocal range, but anyway, said, all right, lightning round, favorite food.

00;43;07;06 – 00;43;12;13
Marty Carpenter
What are you ordering and eating when nobody’s watching or counting calories?

00;43;12;15 – 00;43;32;06
Howard Headlee
I’m saying this is going to be where this. I go to Aberdeen Kitchen and I get this salmon mango bowl. I love averaging kitchen. I’m a health kind of okay nut. So that’s but I literally I get excited thinking about it right now. It’s like I’m going there for lunch.

00;43;32;09 – 00;43;36;15
Marty Carpenter
That’s coming up next. All right. That’s maybe the healthiest thing anybody has said.

00;43;36;18 – 00;43;40;21
Howard Headlee
When I don’t feel good after I eat stuff like, yeah.

00;43;40;22 – 00;43;51;13
Marty Carpenter
All right, you and I are hockey guys. And that predates Utah. Having a team. Our teams were for very long time the best rivalry in professional sports the Detroit Red wings, the Colorado Avalanche.

00;43;51;15 – 00;43;54;11
Howard Headlee
Colorado evangelists. They’re relatively new.

00;43;54;18 – 00;43;59;02
Marty Carpenter
Yeah. Well, you know, we were an expansion team. Just a relocated team, kind of like what we’ve got here.

00;43;59;08 – 00;44;00;11
Howard Headlee
But you’ve made big waves.

00;44;00;12 – 00;44;12;11
Marty Carpenter
Yeah, we did win the Stanley Cup our very first year. Colorado okay. That’s it. You like the Red wings growing up? I like the avalanche. We have a new team in Utah. Have you changed your allegiance? Are you a mammoth fan? Are you sticking with the wings?

00;44;12;13 – 00;44;25;26
Howard Headlee
I have, I have I went to a couple games. Awesome, awesome environment. And I love the guys on the team. They’re just good guys and I’m yeah, I’m connected to mammoth, so.

00;44;25;27 – 00;44;31;15
Marty Carpenter
But that’s a different question. Do you like the mammoth? There’s one thing, but when you say hey is my favorite team is.

00;44;31;19 – 00;44;42;04
Howard Headlee
I find myself checking the mammoth scores more regularly than the Red wing scores now. I probably loyal to the Red wings brand because it’s just cool. Yeah.

00;44;42;06 – 00;44;43;13
Marty Carpenter
It’s hard to beat Original six.

00;44;43;13 – 00;44;47;27
Howard Headlee
But but the tests up is pretty, pretty pretty cool too.

00;44;47;28 – 00;45;09;24
Marty Carpenter
So I will say this because I’ve stuck with my team, but the mammoth did nail the color scheme, the logo, the whole thing. So kudos to them for that. All right. If you if you were not running the Utah Bankers Association, what profession would you most like to try? Not accounting. It sounds like.

00;45;09;27 – 00;45;35;00
Howard Headlee
I know I’d be I’d be in music. I’d be writing music and and recording. I still do that. But. But that’s everybody’s dream. It’s a tough business. And even when you you know, I recorded an album when I was 16, I had an agent, I had a contract, you know, and I yeah, I had a and you just realized it’s a tough lifestyle.

00;45;35;01 – 00;46;01;13
Howard Headlee
And really, I came to that conclusion on my own because I kind of got to a point where I was like a point that I wanted to be at and realized, this isn’t so hot. And and I chose a different path, but I still miss it. I wish there was some way to do that and do it in a way that was that was consistent with having a family and having kids and grandkids.

00;46;01;19 – 00;46;09;21
Howard Headlee
But there is now a technology and stuff. You can do a lot of recording, and that’s kind of what I’m going to focus on as I slow down professionally.

00;46;09;26 – 00;46;16;13
Marty Carpenter
Well, what profession other than yours would you absolutely not like to try?

00;46;16;16 – 00;46;18;24
Howard Headlee
Elected official?

00;46;18;27 – 00;46;22;05
Marty Carpenter
Fair enough. Yeah. We know accounting. So accounting and elected official.

00;46;22;06 – 00;46;36;20
Howard Headlee
And I respect the people that are willing to put their name on a sign and go through that scrutiny. I did it as a child and as a and I just decided I couldn’t do that to my family. But the people that do it, I tremendous amount of respect and I love working with them.

00;46;36;22 – 00;46;51;03
Marty Carpenter
You mentioned that you just wrapped up your service as a member of the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square. What piece of music we can go, sacred or secular here hits the hardest every time you listen to it or sing it.

00;46;51;05 – 00;47;14;29
Howard Headlee
Oh, that is that’s that is a hard question. I mean, I’m a battle hymn of the Republic is. And I’m actually singing in LA at the Hollywood Bowl. And next week that’ll be the last song I ever seen with the choir, and I’m very happy about that. But Come Thou Fount is one that just moves me.

00;47;15;02 – 00;47;35;18
Howard Headlee
Consider the lilies. My cousin wrote that song and and and his. Yeah, that. That song moves me. There’s so many pieces of music that I’ve had deep, sacred experiences with over the last seven years in the choir. It’s hard to ask that question, but those are the ones that come to mind.

00;47;35;19 – 00;47;51;22
Marty Carpenter
That’s a really good top three. I don’t think I would throw any of those three out. In fact, two of them you mentioned are for sure. In my top two. All right. Give me a recommendation, a book, a podcast, TV show, movie, something that you’ve consumed lately that you think everybody else should get tuned in on.

00;47;51;25 – 00;48;00;12
Howard Headlee
Wow, I, I listened to too many podcasts.

00;48;00;14 – 00;48;05;19
Howard Headlee
So I don’t know how to pick one of those out.

00;48;05;21 – 00;48;07;18
Howard Headlee
So give me the list again.

00;48;07;23 – 00;48;18;26
Marty Carpenter
So book, TV show, movie, podcast. It’s just something you’ve you’ve consumed lately where you said that was really good. I need to tell somebody else about this.

00;48;18;28 – 00;48;29;17
Howard Headlee
What was the show? I just I have a hard time remembering the things that I love the most. But, you know, the one that I the show that I will just plug is this. Sheep detectives.

00;48;29;23 – 00;48;30;28
Marty Carpenter
Sheep detectives.

00;48;30;29 – 00;48;58;04
Howard Headlee
Yeah. Is a movie that just came out with. I can’t remember the name of the actor, Hugh Jackman. And I went thinking one thing, and it was pretty. It was a good movie, and most people won’t go see it because it’s like talking sheep. But it was a lot more to that show that let’s all plug that. But okay, lots of podcasts, lots of books that I would say, but I don’t want to be too typical.

00;48;58;05 – 00;49;20;12
Marty Carpenter
I got to be honest, I would have guessed at least one of your two favorite songs and did not have sheep detective on my radar. Okay. Last question. Okay, we’ll wrap up with this. What’s one piece of advice that you would give, let’s say a 15 year old Howard Hedley, because that’s before you had a recording contract and before you debated as part of a gubernatorial campaign.

00;49;20;14 – 00;49;26;28
Marty Carpenter
Go back to your 15 year old self. What’s one thing you would say? Here’s some advice I’d give that kid.

00;49;27;01 – 00;49;50;23
Howard Headlee
It sounds so trite, but it’s really you just have to find what you love and can be passionate about. And I’m so grateful I found banking because I am. I am passionate about it. We talk about this the pursuit of happiness in the role. It’s what makes America great. So don’t get distracted by what really makes America great.

00;49;50;23 – 00;50;25;08
Howard Headlee
It’s it’s the pursuit of happiness. And it’s different for everybody. But that doesn’t happen without a bank and that trusted relationship and, and people willing to take chances and risk and manage those risks and create value. So that’s what your job in this life is to do is to, is to pursue happiness, whatever that means to you and find a way to do it with, you know, as you manage those risks and create value for other people and just be bold enough to do it.

00;50;25;10 – 00;50;55;22
Howard Headlee
I mean, you think about Elon Musk, we talked about it. I mean, he’s crazy. He’s shooting rocks. He’s got rockets into space. He’s got cars that drive themselves. Right. He’s going to build robots and Neuralink and all these things. And he he just does it. And what if he had chosen to do something else? Or I mean, regardless of what it is that you find, just if you’re passionate about it and you do it and you do it well, you’re going to bless lives and yours.

00;50;55;23 – 00;51;01;03
Howard Headlee
Of course. But that’s that’s your duty to find that and to do it.

00;51;01;06 – 00;51;05;22
Marty Carpenter
Howard Hedley, thanks so much for taking some time. Now go get yourself a salmon bowl.

00;51;05;25 – 00;51;10;09
Howard Headlee
I’m looking forward to that. Appreciate it. Thanks.

00;51;10;11 – 00;51;33;16
Marty Carpenter
Back channels of northbound strategy production. Remember, you can subscribe to the audio version of our show wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok. We’re everywhere as Backchannel Utah and we now have video on Apple Podcasts as well. Great conversation today with Howard Hadley. Really appreciate him coming in. It’s important to learn about how banks are just this fundamental piece of our economy.

00;51;33;16 – 00;51;46;08
Marty Carpenter
And as he mentioned, a strong banking community, a strong banking environment goes hand in hand with having the strongest economy in the country. So appreciate the conversation with Howard Henley. We’re back next week with another episode of Back Channel.