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John Maxfield

John Maxfield

Banking analyst and writer behind Maxfield on Banks, founder of The Banking Symposium, formerly senior banking specialist at The Motley Fool and editor-in-chief of Bank Director.

Sep 28, 2026

3:29
What are you trying to do with the huge wealth and diversity of stories that we have in this industry?
3:35
So I spent the first maybe 14 years when I was studying the banking industry.
3:40
And I think of myself as a scholar and storyteller in banking.
3:43
And so I spent really the first, let's call it 14 years studying the industry really, really intensely and studying the history and doing some theoretical work in there.
3:52
And one of the things that you realize is that the narrative on banking isn't accurate.
3:58
If you go back to this idea that bankers are greedy fat cats, even if you go back 200 years to the earliest big bankers, what you find is that they gave away all their wealth after they died to found a school for poor orphans and stuff like that.
4:11
You know what I mean? And so like when I realized that the narrative of American banking was that I didn't believe that it was accurate.

12 MINS LATER

15:54
I know the King Ranch, and I don't know that much about ranching.

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