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Exhibit 4,294,967,296 of why all of these TBTF banks should have been orderly winded down instead of bailed out.
by ralph84 8y ago
Exhibit 4,294,967,296 of why all of these TBTF banks should have been orderly winded down instead of bailed out.
- RhodesianHunter 8y agoPeople need to start voting with their #$@& wallets. I closed my WF accounts when all of their shenanigans came to light but their still one of the very biggest.
- koolba 8y agoThe only explanation for the continued usage of consumer banks that provide sub par service and pay paltry near-zero interest rates is the lack of basic financial education. The majority of people just don’t know any better and think switching banks is a pain. In reality it takes 15 min to open an account online.
- techsupporter 8y agoOr if you want lots of help switching, a local credit union will probably do that, too. I was in a branch of my (not very large, so not really expected to be multilingual) credit union here in Seattle about a month ago and a branch employee was walking a middle-age-appearing couple through switching their automatic debits and direct deposit and such to the account they’d recently opened. And he was doing it in German.
- Scoundreller 8y agoA credit union without any offices in New York City is a good way to protect you against the organisms described here: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-confessions-of-judgment/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-confessions-of-judgm...
- tstrimple 8y agoI"ve had two separate mortgages sold without my consent to Wells Fargo. It's been pretty difficult to avoid them.
- bdcravens 8y agoPlus any companies that use Stripe are sending business to WF.
- porpoisely 8y agoVoting with your wallet works if there are viable alternatives. Where are you going to take your business? Bank of America? JP Morgan? There are only a handful of large banks in the US and they all offshore and they are all guilty of shenanigans. Welcome to globalism where the elites send jobs overseas to lower wage nations and pocket the difference. You really can't vote with your wallet when it's an industry wide problem.
- SllX 8y agoDepends how big you need your bank to be to do business with them. There are plenty of viable alternatives if you don’t demand your bank to be one of the 5 largest.
- gumby 8y agoWhy do you need a big bank? I use a community bank; my kid uses a credit union. Your deposits are insured and small banks usually cover ATM fees (though I don't use much cash any more) s there's really no reason not to use a small bank. Plus if you have a problem you can usually call someone and get it fixed immediately!
- Scoundreller 8y agoAnd as a non-American, I like banking through a credit union that doesn’t have any US operations.
- ThenAsNow 8y agoHaving multiple conveniently-located branches, at potentially broader operating hours, where you can talk to a real person is one significant reason.
- gumby 8y agoUsually at the big banks the "real person" won't have the discretion to actually fix your problem.
- 8y ago
- matz1 8y agoI do vote with my wallet, if by moving job overseas, wf can provide better service for me, I will use them.
- sgjohnson 8y agoHow exactly having an overseas call centre is better service? It’s hideous service. Since American Express in the UK outsourced their live chat to the Phillipines and India, I’m not even bothering with using it.
- matz1 8y agoBy reducing the operating expenses, they could, for example lower fee or increasing interest rate.
- mancerayder 8y agoIt's tough to close your accounts if your account is a mortgage. Mortgage account closing requires either lots of money or refinance, and a refinance depends on interest rates of the present day being lower than when you took the original. Finally, it costs thousands to refinance. Add to that, WF gives an interest rate discount for opening a checking account and setting up direct crediting of the mortgage monthly premium.
- ardy42 8y agoAlso, you have very little control over who services your mortgage. I got my mortgage through a regional bank, but then it was sold almost immediately to Chase, who at a minimum collects servicing fees from it.
- downrightmike 8y agoNever got one in the first place FTW.
- bdcravens 8y agoAlso worth noting that companies that use Stripe are sending business to WF.
- nerdwaller 8y agoI’ve been planning to leave WF for a long time, it was just painful to do it. But recently got the motivation and am making that change with a job shift.
- gaius 8y agoRBS is the same in the UK, despite being majority owned by the taxpayer at the time !
- sgjohnson 8y agoFairly sure the government’s stake was sold off sometime last year.
- gaius 8y agoYes, but while it was owned by the taxpayer, it still pursued outsourcing of local jobs.
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoThey sold off about 10% of total shareholding earlier this year, at several billion under market value. Govt still hold over 60%. https://investors.rbs.com/share-data/equity-ownership-statistics.aspx https://investors.rbs.com/share-data/equity-ownership-statis...
- mac01021 8y agoCareful. People with only 32 bits of working memory might read that as "Exibit 0".
- clairity 8y agoyes, you need orderly cycling to prevent stagnation such as we see in the US economy right now. the wealthy have a lock on power and capital, and continue to idle capital in their own risk-averse hands rather than leaving it in the productive economy to be creatively used by people with vision and ambition.
- twblalock 8y agoBanks and other corporations are not jobs programs or welfare programs for their local communities. The fact that they create local jobs is nice side benefit, but that's not why they exist. They exist for the benefit of their shareholders and their customers, not their employees. The fact that banks take taxpayer bailout money should not change this -- demanding that a bank prefer local employees over less expensive foreign employees will make it less efficient and therefore less competitive at a time when it is already weak, which is counter to the bailout's central purpose of saving the bank.
- claydavisss 8y agoThe banks were not bailed out because people cared if the corporation of the bank prospered. The banks were bailed out to prevent millions of mortgages being put into jeopardy. The banks coexist with Federal agencies that underwrite, protect and regulate savings and mortgages. They aren't food delivery startups. This is why many nations have the notion of "chartered" banks - to recognize that the banks aren't just yet-another corporation. Once the banks accepted bailouts, they accepted a new mission. Same with GM - it effectively became a temporary jobs program once the government started underwriting it.
- ardy42 8y agoLooks like you've been shadowbanned since this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18519412 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18519412 No one can see what you post unless another account vouches for it.
- ralph84 8y agoThank you for your succinct summation of the "privatize the gains and socialize the losses" philosophy.
- twblalock 8y agoWe socialized the gains too. The shareholders and customers of banks vastly outnumber the employees of banks, and they all benefitted from the government's preventing the collapse of the banking system. The government even made a positive return on the taxpayer money it spent on the bailout. Did you honestly believe we all would have been fine if the banks had failed in 2008? A collapse of the banking system would have destroyed the economy and badly hurt every individual American. We didn't bail out the banks for the sake of the banks, but for our own sake. Taking the moral position that the banks deserved to fail would have hurt us more than it hurt the banks.