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The woes of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac haven’t created problems at La Crosse-area banks, Coulee Bank Chairman Dirk Gasterland said Monday.

“It seems to be business as usual,” said Gasterland, who was president of the Wisconsin Bankers Association in 1998-99. “These problems that surfaced (nationwide) have affected the value of publicly traded bank stocks in general. And that has slowed down merger activity that we could have possibly seen.”

People who own publicly traded bank stocks generally don’t have as much confidence as before, “and there’s concern that the depositors will not have the confidence that they had before,” Gasterland said. “It all cycles back to the problems with subprime loans, which weren’t a problem for most financial institutions in the La Crosse area.”

Wisconsin banks are among the highest-capitalized, best-run banks in the nation, and depositors in the La Crosse area don’t seem to be worried, Gasterland said.

It isn’t tough to get a home mortgage in the La Crosse area, Gasterland said. “I think you’ve probably seen some lending standards tighten, but it was probably for the good,” he said. The tightening has occurred since problems with subprime lending surfaced more than a year ago, he said.