Randy Fewel’s an awfully nice guy. For a banker. Actually, Fewel seems like an awfully nice guy for a guy. A person. A human being. Fewel, the president and CEO of Inland Northwest Bank, got in touch with me not long ago, after I’d written a column encouraging people to take their money out of banks and take it to credit unions. I engaged in a little bank-bashing, which is a popular – and I think, on balance, fair – pastime these days, given what some of our large financial institutions have done to the economy and the price they have not paid for it. Fewel didn’t necessarily take issue with what I said about big banks. But he made an excellent case that I’d given small, community banks short shrift/Shawn Vestal, SR. More here. (SR photo: Christopher Anderson)

Question: Do you keep your money in a big, national bank? A small community bank? A credit union? Why?

Anthony Bonanzino has been elected chairman of Northwest Bancorporation, the holding company for Inland Northwest Bank.

Bonanzino succeeds William Shelby, who will retire from the board in 2013.

Bonanzino is the chief executive officer of the Institute for Systems Medicine, and the former CEO of Hollister Stier Laboratories.

The board also waived the corporation's age eleigibility requirement in order to make member Harlan Douglass eligible for re-election by shreholders at their next annual meeting.

The request was clear: $10,000, or bombs would detonate at five Spokane elementary schools.

Police say that phone call to a north Spokane bank turned out to be nothing more than a poorly executed crime by a convicted bank robber who led detectives to his doorstep.

It’s like out of a bad movie,” said Officer Jennifer DeRuwe, Spokane Police Department spokeswoman. “The sad thing is we do have to treat it as real, because the reality is this stuff happens.”

Now police are recommending six felony charges against Donnell L. Winston, 37, for the Oct. 14 phone call to Inland Northwest Bank, 518 W. Francis Ave.

Read my full story here.