Wednesday, December 31, 2008

More Wells Fargo

(As an ongoing rant about my despised {former} banking relationship...)

Sorry to keep on about this issue with Wells Fargo, but it seems that significant credit reduction is quite pervasive with this bank from the many people I spoke to - both bankers and business colleagues. On the bright side, this is quite the boon for the smaller local banks, like WECU (where I transferred my account to today), and other small businesses that seem to be flocking in droves. It brought me peace today to sever my ties with Wells Fargo and have the manager cut up my debit and credit cards in front of me and dispose of them.

On a similar note, it is unfortunate that over the years the SBA funds dried up to become virtually nil, other banking business lines of credit have dried up entirely, and banks have basically forced the small business owner to rely extensively upon (highly profitable) credit cards for their working capital needs. Fortunately, this doesn't impact me, but I do feel sorry for the millions of small businesses trying to make ends meet, and I've worked with many relying upon credit cards to fund expenses during tough times. Again, I think the situation is going to get far, far worse before it get better.

But at least the large banks (like Wells Fargo) get to shore up their balance sheets at the expense of taxpayers. A rough calculation is $125 per taxpayer for Wells Fargo alone for this round ($3,500 per taxpayer for all these large banks looking for handouts from the government). But at least I did write to both Senators today (to be followed up with phone calls), and I bitched all day to anyone that would listen/ So although my battle is not over on my crusade against WF, I hope to at least bury it on this web log.

Sorry, no pictures tonight. It's closing in n New Years (it already is on the East Coast) and I need to get rolling.

No comments: