Big Mike: The Banking Racket

It does my poor old heart good to see Lloyd Blankfein and his fellow reprobates squirming under the hot lights in the Senate committee chamber this week. Still, these gangsters are getting off easy, merely having to face a bunch of flatulent senators rather than, say, a half dozen or so unemployed teachers, bus drivers, and construction laborers armed with Tasers and switchblades. I’d pay to watch that.

You know that character from Inglourious Basterds, I think they called him The Bear Jew, the one who carved swastikas in the foreheads of Nazis? I can see him carving dollar signs into the foreheads of Blankfein, Jamie Dimon, Vikram Pandit, and a few other desmodi rotundi. Hell, I’d help him.

Make That A Dollar Sign, Eli

Anyway, it appears that the banking racket is about to change. Reform is up for consideration in Congress. Michael Lewis and other muckrakers are topping the best-seller lists with books about the evils of Wall Street avarice and Main Street stupidity. Many among the inert millions of TV watchers are even redirecting their choler from brown people and Socialists to the Wall Street con men.

I don’t care if Blankfein, Dimon, et al go to jail. Just so long as they’re thrown out of work, have their assets seized, and have to walk down the street wearing some kind of stigmata. I wonder how long that stroll would last.

And I’d like the banking racket to be redefined and tightly regulated. Not just Wall Street banking, either. Those Mom & Pop banks everybody talks about? You know, those idealized George Bailey-led pillars of the small town that we pretend are in it only for the good and love of their brothers? They need some ass-whuppin’ as well.

This Is A Movie Character Folks, Not Your Banker

I’ll tell you a story. I know a guy who’s a big shot at one of those smallish banks, the kind that advertise themselves as your next door neighbor. Let’s call him Gregory.

Gregory runs the commercial loan department at the bank. He’s an honest guy. Mows his own lawn. Has raised a nice family. Drives a fairly modest four-door. Takes his elderly mother grocery shopping once a week. We were at a funeral not long ago. After the church and the burial, we were pounding down the lasagna at the luncheon for all the mourners.

I figured, Here’s a guy who hasn’t been tainted by the poisons that run through the banking world. So I told him about an encounter I’d had at my bank a few days before. I’d lugged an enormous sack of coins in, hefted it up on the counter, and said I’d like to make a deposit. I’ve been keeping a coin sack since I was a teenager. It’s like my little emergency savings account. I once paid a month’s rent by cashing in my coins.

The teller looked at me as if I had dogshit on my sleeves and said, “We don’t do that.”

I recoiled. “What? You don’t do deposits?”

“No, sir,” — she drew the word out contemptuously — “we don’t do coins.”

“Huh?”

“I said,” — she drew the word out again — “we don’t do coins.”

I fumbled for words. Finally I said, “But isn’t this a bank?”

“Yes it is. But we have no way of counting the coins.”

I was stunned. I repeated: “But isn’t this a bank?”

“Sir,” she said, narrowing her eyes, “We don’t have a coin counting machine.”

“But you used to.”

“Yes, we used to. We don’t have it any more.”

At this point, I was sorely tempted to say, Well, then, since this is a fucking bank and you people are fucking paid to count fucking money, empty this fucking bag out and start counting the fuckers by hand.

A Month’s Rent?

But I didn’t (damn it.) I only said, “What am I supposed to do with these coins?”

The teller reached under her counter, grabbed a fistful of coin envelopes and dropped them before me. She said, “You can count them yourself. Then you can bring the rolls in and deposit them.”

Now, if you know me, you know there wasn’t any way in hell I was going to pick up those freakin’ coin envelopes. “No thanks,” I said and I turned to walk out. But before I left her window, I asked, “This is a bank, isn’t it?”

Icily, she replied, “Yes it is,” which was code for I hope your balls get run over by a steamroller as soon as you get out the door.

A Teller’s Revenge

So I told this tale to Gregory. I was hoping he’d commiserate with me, tell me how nasty the teller was, and say he’d have fired her on the spot. But no. Here’s what Gregory said:

“Banks don’t count coins for customers anymore. It doesn’t make any sense. Why should we do it? It’s a waste of our people’s time.”

Through a mouthful of lasagna, I protested. “A waste of time! I’m the goddamned customer! You guys are nothing without me!” (Admittedly my emotions were running a little high, it being a funeral and all.)

“Lemme tell you something,” he said. “Small depositors are hardly worth the time of day to us. Your business is microscopic compared to our entire bottom line.”

“Oh yeah,” I said, my voice getting louder. “Maybe my few hundred dollars doesn’t mean much to you but all of us little guys together must mean something!”

Now, the restaurant turned deadly quiet. Friends and relatives of the deceased stared at us. I’d never seem a roomful of Italians stop eating lasagna so abruptly in my life.

Gregory’s voice rose too. “I’ve got news for you,” he sneered. “All the small depositors together don’t mean shit to the bank anymore. We’re doing you a favor by taking your money.”

“Oh yeah? Well how about the concept of good customer service? What if the grocery store had that attitude? What if they said, Providing shopping carts are a waste of time so we’re just gonna get rid of ‘em?” I was nearly shouting by now.

“You’re lucky your bank used to count your coins,” he said, matching my volume. “It should have been charging you to do that!”

“Oh great. What else are they gonna charge me for? Opening the door? Breathing their air? Yeah, that’s it. They can say, The air’s inside our premises, therefore it’s our air — that’ll be a dollar, please.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. The bank is a business. It has to maximize its revenues — it can’t be giving services away.”

Now I was on a soapbox. “We’re the lifeblood of your business. We provide you guys with the money you need to do whatever raping of the environment or blockbusting you’re into. Again I say, without us, you guys are nothing.”

Gregory sat back and said, in a calm soft voice, “Not anymore, pal.”

He had me. Over the last couple of years we’ve learned how extraneous depositors are to the banking racket. All these small banks and S&Ls that have been packaging their home loans into collateralized debt obligations and selling them to other banks and S&Ls while the Svengalis (from Salomon Brothers in the 80s to Goldman Sachs today) who’ve created these mortgage bonds then cover their asses by taking out credit default swaps really, honestly don’t give a shit about my money or your money anymore. If Ralph Kramden were a banker in the early 21st Century, he’d have looked at his savings and checking account business and said, “A mere bag of shells.”

The little guy has never, ever been so little.

I had nothing more to say to Gregory the banker. The rest of the people in the restaurant went back to eating their lasagna. So did I. I could only think, as I put a forkful in my mouth, “Oh, brother!”

Today’s Banker And His Small Depositor

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