Keeping the umbrella in case of a bail out
Poet Robert Frost once said, “A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.” I have no opinion. I am a deer standing on a dark forestry road, staring into the fast moving lights that keep getting bigger and bigger. That’s what I thought as I contemplated depositing cash and a check into my savings account today.
Nothing seems to be changing for the better but everything around me seems to be moving fast. The banks seem to have no identity and no backbone. My complaining about their thievery ways and the vanishing tax payers’ money that they received as part of the first bail-out plan is boring even to my own thoughts. The difference between opinion and complaining is that complaining stops and opinions change.
I have about $1000 in my savings and checking accounts combined. I have a $4000 student loan I have to pay back for my bachelor’s degree that hasn’t exactly helped me score a job. This little money that I have been saving up all year long seems really precious to me and I have high hopes invested into it. I can pay for my yoga schooling or finally find out for myself if people in France are jerks. In reality I’ll probably use it to pay for my credit debt.
I don’t deposit money into my savings account to secure my future, or to gain the precious two or three percent interest and I don’t believe that Bank of America’s “keep the change” program is really adding anything to my hard earned cash. I used to do it because I knew if I didn’t put it away, I would spend it on something ridiculous like a vintage mink coat. Now I do it for the same reason, except I am afraid tomorrow it might disappear.
Reading about banks buying off banks, then the government buying out bank assets and writing documents stating that tax payers money is backed by them, only creates a frenzy in my under used brain. Obviously there are trust issues I have to work on, probably because I was born in USSR and one of my fondest childhood memories is being able to use a 10,000 bill in the restroom. That was inflation and we are in a recession. It’s my first recession, since back in the motherland we don’t sweat the small steps.
Foremost, every individual is personally responsible for their own well being and then those who own businesses that employ workers are responsible for those laborers’ economical survival. In France, the government is responsible for the economical status of an unemployed worker. Our own government is trying to do the same by taking on that responsibility right now, but since they don’t only deal with individuals but rather corporations, the way France’s socialist leaning society does our capitalist market has no name or face only a logo or an association by industry. The numbers of unemployed are rising, in January well over 600,000 individuals lost their jobs and 2.6 million people nation wide lost their jobs in 2008.
Deep down inside I have sympathy even for the rotting banks, which have never done anything for me personally, except charge me $3 a month for not having more than $200 in my account.
I keep depositing money into my miserable bank account because I am scared that if I withdraw all my money, and other people start doing it, then America will get a Great Depression déjà vu and it will be called something lame like Great Depression II.
Then there will be a domino effect, the way it went down in Asia in the ‘80s. That was just my attempt at humoring the reader, because I’m tired of being such a downer. I trust in businesses, workers, not brokers, a bit in lawyers, but most of all I have faith in this country and that’s because she is forgiving and we all need that in our lives for a truly happy life.