Vince Rossiter

Vince Rossiter, President, Bank of Hartington, Hartington, Nebraska, died in 1991. He spent his working lifetime as a banker and a disciple of Carl H. Wilken.

Rossiter, and his father Emmett, were an anomaly among banking circles. They understood raw material economics. Resisting decades of peer pressure from the banking industry, Vince fastidiously chronicled two national economic trends and tied them inextricably to below-parity raw material prices: (1) the relative annual comparisons of the nation's six primary sources of income (Net Farm Income, Small Business Income, Rental Income, Corporate Profit Before Taxes, Total Wages and Salaries, and Interest Income) as reported in the Annual Economic Report to the President, and (2) the total accumulation of public and private debt.

From his office, he issued workpapers confirming the relationship between raw materials input as a first point of sale and national employment -- the national exchange equation. His data, however, made clear the point at which debt could no longer be used to sustain the national income. He clearly revealed that national economic imbalance caused jobs to be lost and the federal debt to be forever growing and unpayable from earned means.

During the 1960s, Rossiter served as Chairman of the Agriculture Committee of the Independent Bankers Association. He traveled throughout the U.S. educating rural and urban groups about raw material economics. He often teamed with NORM Executive Director Arnold "Red" Paulson and/or Erhard Pfingsten, vice president of the National Farmers Organization. He served as an advisor for the Center for Rural Affairs in Walthill, NE, during the Center's formative years. His personal dedication and articulate explanations of his comprehensive analyses of the U.S. banking system added greatly to the general body of raw material economics knowledge.