I am extremely grumpy at the moment. The immediate issue falls squarely into the category of “first-world problems”, i.e., it has to do with vee-hickle dashboard lights and we’ll leave it at that for now, because, despite the damn dashboard light, we have two late-model *working* vee-hickles. Who can complain? I can and I will. But not in this venue tonight.

More seriously. What is up [AGAIN] with the damn banking industry? I’m not talking about my local branch bank folks like Gladys or Tiffany or even Brandon. They are going to work every day and doing their jobs and probably getting paid piddly shit to do them. I’m talking about the folks up there in the stratosphere. The ones that are trading and hedging things around like crazy (no, I do *not* know the lingo) but it seems like some of what the “top talent” in the banking industry is doing is crazy unsustainable and that they are probably more interested in lining their own pockets than providing financial services to the public in return for a decent living.

There is a school of thought that says you have to pay big money to the folks at the top to attract the top talent. I understand the concept but I don’t totally agree with it. First, how are we defining “top talent”? What have these people done that makes them so fantastic? Or have they been encouraged to find a new job (because they were horrible at the one they had) and given glowing recommendations because everyone fears retribution? I don’t think the “top talent” should automatically be paid salaries that are exponentially greater than their lowlier employees unless they actually produce something. I’m not sure all of this current crop of bank folks are producing anything much. Well, except for lining their own pockets. Did they not learn *anything* from the 2008 meltdown? I don’t think so.

Y’all are bored with this story by now because I have posted it before but my dad and grandaddy were both bankers and I think it bears repeating. In the last couple years of my dad’s life, he occasionally told a story of when he was a boy and went with his dad to collect a cow. Yes, a cow. The cow was on an island and they had to take a ferry to get there. They walked on to the ferry, walked a mile or so to the farm, collected the cow, walked back down to the ferry dock and walked the cow on to the ferry. Somebody was waiting on the other side with a truck or whatever. This was a story that always ended with a little bit of a moral. “When you are in the banking business, you can get into all kinds of shit.” Yes.

I know that the banking financial services industry is a lot different today and that if cows are ever collected, it’s probably whole cattle farms and I don’t even want to think about what happens to those cows but because I am an omnivore who enjoys a good steak once in a while, I should really just shut up. That said, come on. We all have to earn a living but I wonder if those who are at the higher (or more esoteric) levels of the banking financial services industry could at least think just a wee little bit about their customers and the sustainability of our country’s economy.

I do not have cockroaches here in the Landfill Chitchen. I periodically have mice and I have had ants, little moths, and fruit flies. No cockroaches here.

I do think there are plenty more cockroaches in the banking kitchen.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 14th, 2012 at 6:17 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.