May 23, 2011
I’m writing because my family and I were affected by the lack of bank regulation and we don’t want it to support exploitative banks. I worked for First Florida Bank and was proud of the honorable way the treated their customers. They were acquired by Barnett Bank who merged with Nations Bank and later became Bank of America. These resulted in diminished competition, lower customer satisfaction and each merger left employees without jobs, health insurance and pensions as branches were closed due to duplication.
During my tenure with Compass Bank I had mandatory withholding for the "Compass Charity" which was in fact a PAC not a charity and felt forced to pay for bank lobby efforts that I was opposed to and that would eventually undermine the banking system. All the while, women like myself were on the front lines interfacing with customers and struggling to retain them through multiple conversions and barely making a living wage wondering when the next pink slip would come the executives were making huge salaries and bonuses for all the recklessness.
Lack of regulation allowed the formation of too big to fail entities and Wall Street greed and outrageous pay practices were a major cause of the collapse. Please restore regulatory systems and stop incentives that undermine the system.
Wall Street greed and outrageous pay practices were a major cause of the collapse. One way to change the incentives so they don’t collapse our economy again would be to delay the bonuses for three, five or more years. That way, we’ll know if the loans they made in year one remain good. In the bad days, bankers paid themselves on the volume of loans (mortgages) they generated, not on their quality.
Thank you for considering my comment,
Suzanne Jantz