COMMENTARY
I have tried to have meaningful dialog with bank staff about various issues in banking and the economy for several years, but this is not something any of the bank staff have wanted to do. It is now pretty clear that there are three explanations for this (1) many of the staff are not trained enough to be able to do this; (2) it is certainly not the policy of the bank to engaged in such conversations; and, (3) the banks have only one focus, and that is the profit of the bank.

I understand the need for the bank to be profitable, but it makes no sense for a bank to be more and more and more profitable year after year after year. The economic purpose of a bank is to provide needed banking services, and though they can be handled more or less efficiently, they are not a source of 'more and more and more profit' on top of a stable or declining population.

Over time banks have done less and less basic banking and more and more 'fee based' services. They have also associated themselves with many activities that are not banking but various aspects of the operation of the stock market and other parts of the capital market. This has nothing to do with the provision of needed banking services, but are activities needed in the capital markets ... NOT banking.

The provision of mortgages for financing real estate turned into a fee based activity a long time ago ... maybe the early 1980s, and eventually was also turned into a securitized product that could be off-loaded to others. With the creation of Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae the off-loading was unlimited in scale, and the fee based revenue stream could expand with no banking limits. Surprise surprise there was a limit ... a limit on the number of mortgage worthy customers ... but who cares when there is nobody at any stage of the process that is taking any risk, just earning fees all along the way.

This did not come about by accident ... it came about by design. If it was an aeroplane there would be some serious questions about why the plane would not fly, but when an economy crashes there is no equivalent inquiry system, though the consequences are very severe. The legal system is not engaged in much inquiry, nor it seems the economists and financial academics, nor the leaders of the instirutions, large and small. Without this there will be no durable solution ... and in good part this is a problem being talked about in the Occupy Movement.
Peter Burgess

Occupy SF Shuts Down BofA w/Interview 16 Nov 2011

On 16 November 2011, Occupy SF marched through downtown San Francisco. As they passed a Bank of America, the protesters entered the bank and shut it down for the day. I was inside and interviewed a woman who told me she wanted to be arrested to show loving support for her mom.