Banks Declare War!??

Today I visited a commonly viewed website to see the headlines for the day. Much to my surprise, one headline read “Banks declare war — on you!” “Really?” I thought. “I must have missed that memo.” Of course, I had to click to read more about this ruthless declaration of tyranny and oppression. It turns out that the sensationalized article was not about ALL banks, as suggested, only about credit card companies and credit card issuing banks.

In fact, I started searching for the word “bank” in the article with these results:

“bank” — did not appear in the body of the article–not even once!
“banks” — another no-show
“banker” — never appears
“bankers” — the term is only used twice
“banking” — one appearance as a description, as in “banking regulators”

What this article was really about was credit card companies and credit card issuers. In the interest of full disclosure, this means large, very large companies with Industrial Loan Companies or very large banks–not ALL banks as suggested, and certainly not smaller, community-based financial institutions which may not even offer credit cards.

The bottom line is this: You should be wary of the blanket use of the term “bank.” Remember that the current economic environment was created by large, even “too-large-to-fail” investment banks and greedy institutions (many of which are not banks) that conducted very little (if any) business directly with American consumers. Also remember that a large part of the reason our markets are still operating–be it with a limp–is because there are hundreds, if not thousands, of smaller community-based banks at the foundation of our nation’s financial system trying desperately to treat people with the dignity, respect, and honesty they deserve. These smaller banks have not, nor ever will “declare war” on their customers, because that’s not the way to treat your friends and neighbors.

I will give the author one shred of credit: she managed to point out that you should always be careful with credit cards and credit card debt, and that you should try to get your balances paid off as soon as possible to avoid being the unsuspecting victim of a potential “war” with your credit card issuer. Even when masked in garbage reporting, that is always sound counsel.