OUT-OF-TOWN BANK GROUPS TELL US SOMETHING ABOUT OUR TOWN

"Are your desires purely selfish? Do your tastes run to a grand home, automobiles, fine clothes, an abundance of amusements, and so forth? If so, look around you at people who have such things in abundance. Are they any happier, do you think, than you are? Are they any better morally? Are they any stronger physically? Are they better liked by their friends than you are by your friends? ... Andrew Carnegie said, `Millionaires rarely smile.' This is substantially true."

The late B. C. Forbes

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Whatever we Cape Girardeans think of our community's economy, it's interesting to get a fresh perspective from the way our neighbors view the climate here. Judging from the crowd of out-of-town banks jostling to get into this market, somebody here must be doing something right.

Monday morning saw many of us in attendance at the ribbon-cutting of the beautiful new Amerifirst Bank. Strategically placed at the corner of St. Francis Drive and Route K, this new facility seems poised for growth. Bank of Sikeston investors have combined with several of Cape Girardeau's heavyweights to bring this new bank to our town.

Another group of Sikeston bankers has surveyed the investment horizons and concluded that Cape Girardeau offers as good a growth opportunity as they are likely to find. I refer to Sikeston's First National Bank, which has purchased from Mercantile Bank the old Colonial Federal location on Broadway. First National has been making mortgage loans here for some time, and will open a full-service facility soon.

Then there is a banking group from Poplar Bluff that reportedly has its sights on opening banks in Cape County and in nearby Chaffee.

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Monday's regular monthly meeting of the Board of Directors of the Southeast Missouri Regional Port Authority took an unusually long five hours. We are hot on the trail of several promising business/industrial/trading prospects. We're hopeful that one or more of these will become signifcant announcements of further economic development and growth later this year.

A hardworking board and executive director Alan Maki are striving to make sure that this is not just "pie-in-the-sky." We'll keep you posted as developments warrant.

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"It is much easier to be critical than to be correct."

Benjamin Disraeli

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The success of Cape Girardeau native Rush Limbaugh continues as one of the amazing phenomena of our time. Now heard on more than 350 radio stations nationwide, including almost all the big markets, Rush has a book in prospect (a major New York publishing house approached with him, offering a big advance). Much more is in the planning stages. A California TV crew was in Cape this past weekend, interviewing Rush's hometown acquaintances for the third "Rush" video. Ben Wattenberg offered these interesting comments on talk radio recently.

Voice Vote

"It has been said that the primary election is America's contribution to the theory of democracy. Call-in talk shows, an American idea now beginning to spread globally, also deserve a nomination. They are the electronic answer to the town meeting. For the price of a phone call, citizens try to change the world. Politicians are among the listeners. They know the sound of a populi when it voxes."

Nationally syndicated columnist Ben Wattenberg