It Is What It Is

Small regional banks like AmericanWest were largely neglected by our leaders in Washington, D.C., while the government acted to “bail out” many of the nation’s “too large to fail” financial institutions (whether they needed it or not) following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the financial meltdown that occurred in September 2008. This is the story of how one small regional bank that government officials considered “small enough to fail’ managed to save itself.