This morning as I drove to work, I heard about yet another large bank having difficulties with their profits or whatever. I sighed. Again. This evening, I got home and I was futzing around with my urban hike photos and I heard that *another* bank was having some kind of difficulties. This time, it was *my* bank. Big sigh.

I am associated in part with this bank because it has roots in my childhood. When I was a little kid, my granddaddy was the president and my dad (aka Grandroobly) worked his way up through the ranks. Teller, to assistant head teller, to head teller, to VP and eventually prez and then Chairman of the Board.

My grandaddy did not have a fancy investment banking degree or any of that shit. And yes, I’m swearing here. Sorry. My grandaddy never swore in front of me. He made up his own swear words. But I’ve posted my dad’s cow banking story and I’ll bet there was some interesting swearing going on behind the scenes when I was a kid.

Anyway. My grandaddy started out with mostly nothing. When he was a baby, back in the late 1800s, his family lived in northern Saskatchewan. It was a base for his father to run a Hudson Bay Company trapping operation. My great-grandaddy and his brother died on a trapping run and Grandaddy’s mom moved the family to Sault Ste. Siberia, Michigan, where she had relatives who were willing to help her.

When Grandaddy grew up, he decided that a small-time banking job might be better than calcimining houses, so he took a job at the bank and he eventually rose through the ranks to become the bank president. A highly respected one, who was fair but didn’t take any crap.

My dad ended up at the bank too (long story, of course) and, in his time, he steered the little local bank into a buyout by a holding company and the subsequent conversion to computer records that damn near drove him crazy. He was fair and highly respected and he didn’t take any shit (I don’t think). And he didn’t have some blasted MBA or investment banking degree or whatever. Years later that holding company was bought out by the company that posted its grief today. Dad and Grandaddy are probably haunting all those nincompoops today. You go, ol’ codgers!!!

When my dad’s little Yooper bank was absorbed by the first holding company and my dad was promoted to CEO, they strongly suggested that my dad should actually, um, GO OUT TO LUNCH sometimes. Eating a peanut butter sandwich at his desk was not appropriate for a bank CEO.

I think we’d do a lot better if more banking executives did have a peanut butter sandwich for lunch.

And just possibly, a stint at calcimining houses might give some of these people a reality check about how most people actually live.

National City, getcher shit together!

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 7:44 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.