One wonders at the Herculean effort that must be required of the editing department of the Democrat and Chronicle that they’re able to have psychic space for the subject of my last post and this latest article in the same moment:

Wall Street roughs up Buffalo-based M&T | democratandchronicle.com | Democrat and Chronicle

According to M&T’s quarterly filings, the bank has an increasing amount of bad debt related to the nation’s real estate woes, with $99 million in loan charge-offs for the quarter, up from $22 million the same quarter a year ago. Those charge-offs, M&T said, in large part were loans to residential real estate developers and builders.

M&T said it also saw increased amounts of bad home equity loans and residential real estate loans.

So, the “conservative” principles that local banks rely on have kept them in good stead. . . except when that 99 million in defaulted loans becomes convenient to explain the loss of profitability.  Figure that out.