We All Should Mourn Devouring of Banks

Headlines trumpet the mega-merger of banks: Wells Fargo has finally managed to devour reluctant First Interstate. And how many thousands will be out of work in the next few months?

I worked at Wells Fargo for 21 years. For a number of those, I was a little wheel in the large dispassionate machine that gobbled up small banks before it had learned to stretch its great white shark’s jaws wide enough to consume Crocker Bank. They were small institutions whose acquisition were hardly enough to draw anyone’s attention to the number of displaced and laid-off people. It was 10 here, 20 there, the staff of this branch, the employees of that department.

We learned how to do it so very, very well: the unemotional and mechanical compilation of statistics to determine optimum utilization of staff in order to slash expenses--to reduce individuals to fearful bewilderment and families to impoverishment and crises. Inevitably, we too eventually were coughed up onto the shores of unemployment and uncertainty.

With each bank ingested into the gaping maw of profitability, the shark became a leviathan hiding beneath the surface of our economy until now it wallows in bloated exultation of its newest conquest.

As the logo changes, the trademarks on the checks morph from the big “FI” to the rampaging stagecoach, as the branches close and the people are replaced by an even greater proliferation of ATMs, we should all mourn just a little--all of us.

DAVID L. RUGGERI

Anaheim