Lessons in Banking: Personal and Political

My first series of posts, Lessons in Banking, has been written largely to help me articulate and process for myself the ways in which my short-lived career at a large bank impacted the way I think now about big business, the financial industry and government regulation. I had spent most of my adult life as a stay-at-home mom and spent many years helping my self-employed husband in his small business. 

I've worked for two other companies for longer than I worked at the one I've referred to TBTF (To Big To Fail) Bank. One of them was a true "small business" with about twenty employees. I've been working at one of the largest credit unions in the country for the past five years now. 

Nowhere else have I witnessed  the intense concentration of greed, deception, denial and lack of accountability l that I observed in less than two years working at a low level position in one small corner of one of the world's largest banks.

I never felt comfortable being associated with TBTF and had frequent little crisis of conscience while working there. In 2006 and 2007 my concerns about TBTF were limited to how their practices impacted their own customers and my own conscience. 

Headlines from fall of 2008

 

What was not on my radar at the time was how TBTF Bank and other huge banking corporations like them had the power to cripple the US and global economies, bring financial ruin to people and families far beyond their own customer base and to exert huge influence on our elections and elected officials. I still am far from astute in my understanding of business and economics, but I did come out of the experience with some personal and hopefully humble opinions. 

By the time the sub-prime mortgage crisis came to a head and the economy was in crisis, I had left TBTF Bank of my own accord and had been happily employed at the credit union for almost a year. As economic events unfolded in 2008 and beyond, I often looked back and tried to process what I observed at the bank in 2006 and 2007 in light of the bigger picture. 

As an American citizen, I think it's important to remember all businesses are not created equal. The words, business, government regulation, pro-business often seem to be thrown around rhetorically with no distinction between sizes and types of business. Some of the rhetoric would convince us that any government regulation of business is inherently wrong. In my opinion, businesses large enough to wield destructive power over our nation and the world had better be held accountable and there is no one to do that other than a government elected by the people and for the people.

October 2009

 


 I hear and agree with warnings against placing our faith in government, but is "In Big Business We Trust" a better option? People who trust in God should recognize both other alternatives as forms of idolatry. 

And as citizens of a democratic republic, we have more influence over our government than we do over multinational corporations, although even that is being diluted as their  influence in government grows. We do need healthy businesses unhampered by unnecessary regulation, but I have come to believe that some government regulation, especially of  large and powerful businesses, is absolutely necessary.