Warren Buffett says you should judge a banker by how they bank, not by their speeches or PR: "It's what they do and what they don't do. And what Wells (Fargo) didn't do is what defines their greatness."
Buffett tells Fortune's Adam Lashinsky that Wells didn't do "dumb things" just because all the other banks were doing them:
"Those guys have gone their own way. That doesn't mean that everything they've done has been right. But they've never felt compelled to do anything because other banks were doing it, and that's how banks get in trouble, when they say, 'Everybody else is doing it, why shouldn't I?'...
"In the end banking is a very good business unless you do dumb things. You get your money extraordinarily cheap and you don't have to do dumb things. But periodically banks do it, and they do it as a flock."