ANOTHER BANK MELTDOWN LOOMING-UPDATE 50-5 NEW FAILURES NEW TOTAL FOR 2010 TO 145

We already have too many bonds for the world to swallow, unless the sheeple are scared out of stocks and into bonds by bad news. After all Bernanke is a bond salesman, primarily, as well as a buyer. He sells for the treasury by guaranteeing the dollar. We need bad news to guarantee the dollar.

On top of that, the Chinese are going to apparently walk away from the bad swaps sold to her national companies by our shyster banks. Serves the banks right.

We are still in meltdown mode but the government and Wall Street are pretending like we are not. No real long term solution is on the horizon and the shadow banking system that helped cause this mess continues unmolested. I don't think a recovery is coming. It's like you say, I hate to keep saying negative stuff over and over. People are so tapped out on doom and gloom, but honestly, we're screwed. (That's technical bank talk! lol!)

Tom, I don't suppose we're fairing too much better this side of the Atlantic, but various political shennanigans in the lead-up to next year's general election, are serving to keep the average punter's eye off the ball. It's hard to see how things are going to improve globally, and like Pam, I can see more problems to come.

Tom, I worked in the corporate call center of a major regional bank that was taken over by another regional bank in January of this year in a sale forced by Treasury. What happened was, my bank applied for TARP funds and Treasury denied their application and gave the funds to a bank in slightly better shape. Treasury made buying the bank I worked a condition of the other bank getting TARP money. A lot of bank failures are covered up by forced sales of this nature. So we aren't really even getting the truth, even looking at FDIC, which is bad enough.

I was only at the bank for a year and a half. I quit after I had what looked and felt like a heart attack at my desk. When I started, I had a $100,000 a month sales requirement just to keep my job (I was in CUSTOMER SERVICE, but we still had sales thresholds to keep from getting fired). By the time I left in October of last year, I had a sales requirement of $1 million per month to keep my job and I wasn't making it, not even sort of. I made $10 an hour.

The day Bear Stearns went belly up our bank's stock dropped 80% in a single day. When I quit, it was hovering around $1.25 a share. We got daily emails from corporate saying the bank wasn't in trouble, and to make sure to tell all the customers that. Customers just laughed at us or called us liars, which we were.

One lady, I'll never forget, when I trotted out the corporate BS just laughed and said, "Honey, I'm not trying to be mean, but your bank is at the top of the 'Most Likely to Fail Next' list. Your stock is in the toilet. You might have another week or two." We had two months.

SOOOOOOOOOOO many banks right now are solvent only on paper by the grace of creative accounting practices. When our bank was going down, every time I'd say "Our bank is going down," I'd get jumped on by supervisors and coworkers alike. I'll never work in the financial sector again. I'd rather muck our horse stalls. I never saw such irresponsibility and raw greed, and I was at the bottom of the pyramid. When I left, I think the janitorial staff had sales goals. It was all about busting butt to funnel that money to the top. Richard Fuld, Angelo Mozilo--those guys are fine. The rest of us? Not so much.

I'm still unemployed. That was probably my last job in this lifetime. I live in Michigan. I'm 56.

Good hub....the party is over and the house is trashed! Like Pam said, "We are screwed!"

Tom, you'd be shocked at what customer service jobs have become. Serving the customer is often the last item of business. I became a CSR after a bad divorce 10 years ago--needed a good job and was working in my ex's business as the office manager--that wouldn't fly! lol! So I ended up at a multinational insurance company and moved to the bank after five years because it looked like there was more opportunity to get off the phones there. Wow, was I wrong. (Well, on the other hand, I'm off the phones now... thank God!)

I saw the trend to require sales thresholds as part of CSR work coming during my last year at the insurance company. All the supervisors were telling us to get ready for it; that you'd either do it or get it out because everyone was doing it. Now, it's pretty standard all around. Most CSRs are there to sell you something, not fix your problem. I agree, that's what's wrong with the corporate business model, but at this point they just don't care. They don't care what we want. They care what they want. The ideal corporate business model right now is provide nothing for lots of money. Just give us your money. Or, just shut up and give us your money.

Great insightful scary HUB. Let's face it , we are in deep trouble and this President and this administration doesn't have a clue about the danger of our mounting debt. I don't think the financial sector does either. Apparently, no lessons were learned. It's deja vu all over again!

I agree, Tom. We are are serious trouble. It seems to me we should have taken our lumps last year instead of printing more and more money because I think it is going to make the crash worse than at the first. Yours is a fine article. Thank you for it.

Here is a clue.

Look at the treasury department and see where the head hunchos came from. It answers the question why did they let Bear-Sterns fail.

I'm betting the house ths as depression written all over it. Big time!

Hey Tom I was reading PGrundy's story. My daughter worked for Citibank when they had her pushing credit cards as a phone teller. She said Citibank was a joke and she quit.

Oh, and the Bank of International Settlements is setting the tier 1 capital requirements to 8 percent. Bank of America has 5.8 percent. Hmmm.