Gov. Jim Gibbons has not put much in the bank since he took office at the beginning of the year. In fact, when he gave a speech last week hyped as his foray into the mortgage-lending crisis, he already was operating at a deficit.

He had already appointed as his head of the Business and Industry Department a woman named Mendy Elliott, a former Wells Fargo employee without much standing in the political community. The appointee was seen as yet another northerner by many southern folks — and one who had few relationships in the political or business worlds here.

(Elliott's son, Nick Vander Poel, also was working in the Gibbons administration, tabbed by the governor as something of a political hatchet man. Vander Poel had been tasked with dismissing folks from state boards for political reasons.)

Then, as the state's foreclosure rate soared and the national crisis grew more acute, Elliott — presumably with the governor's blessing — plucked Joe Waltuch from a bankrupt lender being investigated by the feds to head the state's Mortgage Lending Division. This inspirational pick was met with shock and guffaws in the business and political world.

Elliott strenuously defended the choice, insisted Waltuch was a victim and claimed he would help reform the industry. (For some reason, Waltuch's most recent employment with the bankrupt lender, which Elliott described as giving him the ability to see what is wrong with the industry, was not listed in the news release Elliot sent out.)

And that brings us to last week's speech, promoted in advance by the administration as the governor taking on the mortgage-lending crisis.

The speech itself was mostly a recitation of good economic news and portrayed the foreclosure crisis — it took Gibbons more than half the address to the Nevada Development Authority to get there — as a blip.

"Nevada is not without its challenges, but it would be a disservice to those who came before us and those who will come after to systematically dismantle the nation's most efficient economic engine," Gibbons declared, as if someone had suggested such a dismantling.

Then, finally, he focused on the foreclosure crisis, which is three times anywhere else in Nevada. Gibbons spent a couple of minutes detailing the problem — for governments, for homeowners, for the construction industry. And the solution:

"It is time for us to meet this challenge head on. On Oct. 4, at the Grant Sawyer Building, I will host an Economic Summit on Housing Stability. I will be joined by principals — key decision makers — from Nevada's top five lending institutions. Our objective is to fully define the scope of this challenge and to identify workable solutions for Nevada's working families. Nevada has a long history of being resilient and resourceful when put to the test. I have no doubt that we will do so again."

No music was playing in the background as he delivered these momentous words, but I am not sure what soaring march could have captured the drama of the moment, the reassuring crescendo of his words.

One minor, insignificant, trifling problem, however: Turns out that reality did not match the rhetoric: No lenders had committed, so far as anyone could tell by late last week or early this one. Elliott assured my producer, Dana Gentry, that she would announce the names by the end of the week, as if this were a state secret.

Or, since the credibility of this administration to execute the simplest tasks is in doubt, that they spoke before they knew — a pattern that goes back to Gibbons declaring empowerment as a panacea for schools and then 48 hours later having to go to a remedial course to learn what it is.

So we now await Oct. 4 and we will see which, if any, lenders will show up at this historic summit. My guess is the quintet will come because it's hard to say no to the governor.

But will the event produce anything more than the rhetoric we have heard so far? With the series of events that have preceded the summit, I'd have to say that Gibbons' credibility on this subject is facing foreclosure.