I thought momentarily I was in a scene from The Exorcist or The Shining or one of those other scary movies about Satan or something really bad. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I was in the presence of evil.
Bankers make a significant amount of money not off all that lending they do with our money, although they make plenty off this practice as well. Bankers make a significant amount of money off people who have limited money and can't afford to bank. What's great now is folks don't even use checks and don't watch their accounts closely enough and those debit cards are a boon for NSF fees. We were making money hand over fist with the people who just purchased another $42 Big Mac and shake.
A President at the bank I quit a few months ago was in a meeting to announce how well our mortgage area was doing. He said he was "surprised" because the market was in such a downturn. Seems the foreclosures were now being sold again at a much reduced price to people who could afford them and we were lending the money. These folks were then turning around and renting them back to people, often those who had lost their homes due to foreclosure, for "cost plus," the cost of the loan plus more because it "wouldn't be fair for investors not to make a profit."
Our Tellers handle perhaps $35,000 to $50,000 a day. If they're short or long, even a little, there's a better than even chance we'd fire them. They make $11.00 to $15.00 an hour on average. They barely make a breathable wage much less a living wage. Every quarter we perform a staffing analysis to insure we have the right number of Tellers per location and insure they're all working hard enough (we count their transactions per hour and if they're not up to standard we cut staff, adding transactions to each Teller).
Our CEO made $387,500 last year, plus a bonus and exclusive of his car allowance, country club memberships and the numerous "freebies" he gets from every vendor that walks in our door. Oh, and he's a significant stockholder. When he retires he'll sell his investment and rather than simply having a few million bucks like he has now, he'll be a millionaire fifty, sixty or seventy times over. If he plays his cards right he'll have maybe 20 or 30 homes he's purchased on the foreclosure market. Maybe he can rent these back to the Tellers or other similarly situated bank employees who lost their homes after they were fired for coming up short...again.
I left banking a while ago. I'd rather be blowing sailors at 5 bucks a pop. It would leave less of a taste in my mouth.
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