9:30am | I don’t know exactly when I opened my Washington Mutual account. Last decade, maybe the one before that. I do recall that it was in February 2008 when the federal government placed the bank into receivership with the FDIC. And I remember hearing that customers wouldn’t be affected.
And I wasn’t. I know little about the details on the bank/government end, but I was unaffected then, and I was unaffected when Chase took over.
That’s how I ended up supporting the most powerful bank in the United States, a paragon of wealth consolidation. And I kept on doing it right through Bank Transfer Day, not because I am indifferent to this sort of thing, but because I was lazy.
On a level of personal experience, I have nothing bad to say about Chase. The service they provided me — free of charge, since I always kept my account above (though sometimes just barely above) the minimum requirement — was perfect at both the institutional and customer-service levels.
This personal experience made it emotionally counterintuitive to close my account. Generally speaking, if a business provides you with great service, not only do you keep patronizing it, but you tell your friends. “You’re looking for a bank? I gotta tell ya, Chase’s record in my book is unblemished.”
But sometimes there are bigger principles involved. And as much as I would have liked to deny it — who the hell wants to re-set up all that automatic bill-pay stuff? — this was one of those times.
In our megacorporation-dominated society, the combination of awareness and conscience often comes at the price convenience. You know how easy it is to find low-quality produce from factory farms or garments made in foreign sweat shops — and to save money in the process? Ignorance is bliss.
But then you learn about how the animals are treated, the hormones and pesticides, the labor conditions, the business practices, the politics. Never mind how massive corporations squeeze out small businesses — and thus reduce variety and true choice — out of communities.
Or you learn that over 80% of all banking assets are held by 10 banks. Maybe you don’t care. But maybe the phrase Absolute power corrupts absolutely comes to mind, and you wonder if the consolidation of U.S. wealth might not be the best possible state of affairs.
There’s not much you can do about the Big Picture,, of course. Except your part. You can take your few thousand dollars across the street to a smaller bank or a credit union, and console yourself with the reality that wealth can only be deconsolidated, if not one dollar at a time, transfer by transfer.
It doesn’t change the country. It doesn’t make you a glorious, shining knight in the battle against a greed-breathing/-breeding dragon like Capitalism But it may make you feel a little bit better about the role you’re playing in the world.
And that, as the MasterCard says, is priceless.