You and the organizations you represent deserve great credit for the immensely important work you re doing every day in cities and towns all across America. I m particularly proud of the contribution that national banks make to your efforts, not only as lenders and investors, but also as partners fully committed to the communities they serve.
Community development is a rich and varied field.
But whether your specialty is some facet of small business lending, or affordable housing, or something else, each of you is also in the business of overcoming challenges. Now there s a new challenge before us. The prosperity of the 1990s may not have lifted all boats, but there s little doubt that the benefits of nearly a decade of uninterrupted economic growth were widespread. It s no coincidence that the last decade was also one of dramatic accomplishment in the community development arena. And there s little doubt that at least some of the CD projects undertaken over the last ten years would have had trouble getting off the ground in a less buoyant economy.