host: steve verdier, welcome. tell us about your organization and its mission.uest: represent almost 5000 community banks in virtually every state and community in the country. the mission of our association is to represent them here in washington in congress and the agencies. we also provide them services. we do group buying in many areas like credit cards, mortgages, and many other things that we offer our members. we help them politically and economically. a community bank is not a technical term. it is more a focus on the local ownership and decision making. oftentimes, the regulators will say that if you are under $1 billion in assets, that is a community bank. for some purposes, it may be even higher amounts. it is really the local focus, ownership, and decision-making that is critical to being called a community bank. host: has the role of those banks changed or evolved over the last decade? when we talk about banks, we often think of the big national banks. how is your role different? guest: our role is to make sure that people think more about just the