Bank of Opportunity (not)

I’ve loathed Bank of America since the 70s, so I freely confess to being unsurprised over the past couple of years to find that as it grew its incompetence increased by an order of magnitude. I mean, it’s definitely got that anti-Midas-whatever-it-touches-turns-to dross thing down perfectly.

I was therefore appalled when we-the-people ended up bailing out BofA (which touts itself as the "Bank of Opportunity") to the tune of tens billions of our tax dollars. I can’t think of anyone outside of Wall Street executive offices who thought that was a good idea. The expression my grandmother would have used would have been “money for old rope.”

Even Warren Buffet swallowed a few pitchers of the too-big-to-fail Kool-Aid; a couple of weeks ago he invested $5B in the bank. That’s just good money after bad.

And; here’s how they’ve repaid us: as per the Corporate Manual for Fiscal Responsibility and Shareholder Value that’s used by every major business in every industry these days, BofA has announced it’s cutting 30,000 jobs.

None of them, of course, would be in senior management.

Personally, I consider that BofA has jumped bail. I’m ready to send the bounty hunters into the boardroom to do something about getting our money back.

However, I'm sure that BofA's 'Pub pals in Congress are going to find ways to enlighten us on how this fits into the world where weighting the scales in favor of deregulation & tax breaks for big business is the best opportunity for creating jobs.


I suppose that, in their collective view, 30,000 bank tellers out of work is better for the economy than 30,000 mortgage execs or hedge fund managers.