The IndyMac fiasco: a three-day run of federal incompetence
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On Day 3 of the financial hostage drama otherwise known as IndyMac Federal, someone needs to say it: The government’s takeover of IndyMac has been a stunning display of cluelessness and incompetence and has given bank customers every reason to feel anxious and angry.
If there is financial unease and anxiousness in America today, it is partly the FDIC’s fault.
For the third day in a row, the federal government this morning appeared unprepared to deal with bank customers who simply want their money. Frazzled, anxious and angry Californians -- many of them elderly -- are waiting on blazing sidewalks for the third day in a row, while security guards block the doors to the bank’s branches. An elderly woman fainted while waiting in line in Pasadena. Depositors were threatened with arrest yesterday in Encino. This is how the government treats its customers?
In exactly which manual of customer service does it say the following: When your customers arrive at your place of business, do not open the doors and invite them inside. Instead, guard the doors and tell your customers to wait for hours in the sweltering heat outside. If they grow restless, threaten them with arrest.
I’m not suggesting the government cover uninsured deposits. I’m suggesting it treat its customers with respect.
This is more than a matter of inept customer service. Images of anxious depositors unable to get access to their money are powerful, and scary; they cause even more financial anxiety. The FDIC is responsible for those images, and that anxiety, because the FDIC is keeping these people waiting in line. In Santa Monica this morning, about 15 people, many of them elderly, were waiting on the sidewalk outside an IndyMac branch. I asked a security guard why he couldn’t just invite them inside the bank. He said the bank’s air conditioning system could not handle the crowd. I suggest the FDIC dip into its $50-billion fund, drive over to Home Depot, and buy some fans.
I know of children in Los Angeles who run lemonade stands that have better business sense than the FDIC has displayed this week.
The FDIC has 4,500 employees. It needs to put a few hundred of them on airplanes today to come to California and run this bank. Invite the customers inside, turn up the air conditioning and keep the branches open around the clock until there are no more lines. That’s right, invite your customers in off the street. Pretend for a moment that you care about them.
Do not tell them to go to your website. Do not tell them, as the president did yesterday, to ‘take a deep breath.’ They are not behaving irrationally. Theirs is a rational response to government incompetence. It’s their money and they want it. Greet them politely, ask them what they want, and give it to them.
-- Peter Viles
Your thoughts? Comments? E-mail story tips to peter.viles@latimes.com.
Photo: Los Angeles Times