COS News: The office of Fed issued new guidelines for banks that accepted money from the government TARP* program. (*Troubled Assets Relief Program)
Fed Better World Guidelines
#1. Though shall be open
Banks are required to be open at times when customers are not working themselves. 6am-8am and 5pm- 9pm, as well as all day on the weekends.
#2. Though shall be courteous
Banks are now required to be courteous to their customers. Banks are required to say things like “we really appreciate your business”, “thank you for letting us borrow your money”, or “we appreciate that over the last 3 years you have paid us more money than you make in a year, for interest on automobiles and property” etc. Even if the customer only has $50 dollars left in their checking account. Particularly then. After all, this is actually $50 more than the bank had prior to the Government taking money from The People and giving it to them.
#3. Though shall speak English and/or whatever the language the customer uses.
No more shall banks be allowed to use Latin, Greek, King James English, or Calculus infused with poetry.
#4. Though shall not make statements in 2.5 point font.
“Hey stupid, are you reading this?” “If you are reading this then you know you are about to get screwed.” “How bad do you really want this loan? “Are you thinking about your children right now? You should be.”
#5. Though shall not publish encyclopedias of information and ask people to sign it right then and there, on the spot. All eyes glaring. “Oh, it’s nothing- just sign here.”
#6. Though shall not bundle the customer’s assets and sell them off to some other stranger.
WTF? What if we took your chairs, tables, and those things you use to make people line up straight and bundled them up in a blue plastic tarp and sold them to a crack house. Then when you have questions about them, we will tell you to go talk to those people.
#7. Speaking of lobbies; though shall provide customers with something to do while standing in line, refreshments, warm cookies, and a little jar of candy. Once in awhile have barbeques and invite your customers. Though shall play Christmas music through the entire year.
#8. Though shall not deliberately make the customer lose money so that you make money.
This seems to be an obvious social contract and should be a fundamental rule of banking. We will make you sign this contract and provide it every time you meet with a customer.
#9. Though shall not subjugate customers to arbitrary un-navigable rules that lead to penalties.
Though shall not apply arbitrary penalties and then charge people additional penalties on arbitrary rules broken because you applied the former arbitrary penalty.
#10. Though shall not pay your executives a multiple of 100,000 times what the average American makes on the mistaken premise that they are just better than the average American or in other words that you deserve that money because nobody else can lose money quickly or as well as you can.
Furthermore, though shall apply risk to the Executives income. i.e. if you lose all of OUR money, give us back all of YOUR money, all of it.
Lastly, require broken bank executives to clean lobbies, shine customer’s shoes, or do some other servile labor so that they can be of service to society and also cannot lose more of the customer’s money.
