The great Banking conspiracy

Banks! PFFFFF! I am not surprised that they have created an international crisis. I never trusted them. It also doesn't surprise me that it happened on George W. Bush's watch. The whole problem is that there are a whole bunch of very rich people trading debt and speculating on debt. The rich making money off the poor. The American market had been off limits to the poor and lower middle classes.Well meaning activists and legislators had formed organizations like fanny Mae and Freddie Mack. People who never thought they could afford a house now found that they could. Cynical bankers gave mortgages to people who would never have received a mortgage years before. They then promptly sold these high risk mortgages to speculators who sold them to pension funds that should not have been investing in high risk loans. The rich got richer and the poor lost their homes and got the boot. The world lost billions, nay trillions and the poor get poorer. All due to George W. and his deregulation and his rich friends.
International financial institutions were shaken to the core. Many closed. The huge American banks floated along on clouds of hot air. Soon their balloons deflated and the rich plutocrats came back to earth on huge golden parachutes, while the victims were turfed out onto the streets. Scumbags all. Now I won't pretend that I was smart enough to foretell all this in advance. I am not a savant. I did however know that banks were not to be trusted. In fact I have known it for quite some time. Since I was quite a child. I was, at a very tender age, a victim of the international financial cartels and their avarice. Oh I know, I hear you scoffing, but hear me out. I will tell you the sad details of how I became a victim of the heartless banking empire.
When I was young I was a callow and capricious fellow. This did not go down well with my Mother. She wanted me to know the value of a dollar. She had been raised in poverty and she wanted her children to escape its' clutches. She did her best to teach us the value of a dollar. Lord knows she could stretch a dime to a dollar. She shopped for a bargain and was very wise, never one to fall victim to a salesman's pitch. I remember watching an encyclopedia salesman's routine as he plied his trade on my parents. "Imagine buying this fine set to state of the art encyclopedias for less money than you would pay for the daily paper. Surely your children's future is worth more than a lousy newspaper? In order to make it easier for you, however we will allow you to pay more than that newspaper so you can be the proud owner of the incomparable set of encyclopedias!" 'allow us to pay more?" My Mother wasn't buying it literally or figuratively. He left with his tale between his legs. Lucky he still had a tail. My Mom was no fool. I would have bought the encyclopedias and the annuals that went with them.
Part of our education was to do odd jobs to make extra money. Shoveling driveways for elderly couples who needed someone to do it. This brought in a few dollars. I already had a piggy bank. A plastic Colonel Sanders bank that I had waited for in the parking lot of our local KFC on a sweltering August day when Colonel Harlan Sanders himself had come to town to be Grand Marshal of our local "Natal Day Parade" the city's birthday celebration. He was smaller than I expected and he looked exactly like his picture on the bucket except that he was even whiter. White hair, white beard white suit. He was very gentle and he spoke funny. He gave me the bank, a Balloon with his picture on it and big paper feet and a comic book which had a coupon in it that my Mom cut out and used, which kind of toasted the comic book.
My Colonel Sanders bank was getting full. Full of left over pennies. fifty cent pieces that I had been given by my Uncle. It also contained a few silver dollars I had gotten for Christmas and three silver dollars I had been given for perfect attendance by my teacher at school. My teacher mind you, not the school itself. AND not for not missing an entire day. I hadn't even missed ONE class. I was very proud of them. I was upset when Mom insisted I take them out of the card and put them in the Colonel's belly. The problem with the Colonel was that he was solid plastic. There was no cap or cork. No way to take my money out and look at it. Those silver dollars had canoes on them with men paddling them. I loved to look at the picture on the silver dollar. But no, into the Colonel's belly they went.
Before too very long the Colonel was full. When I drew this to my Mother's attention she said it was time to put the money in a real bank. Great I thought a bank like my sister had. One that you could dump the money out of and look at it.. Play with it. "NO!" My Mother said "A real bank. A building where you take your money so it will be safe." "Safe?" I said what do you mean?" "The people there will look after your money, even pay you money to do it." Really? This was something I could not comprehend. We got a old knife and cut the bottom off the Colonel. We dumped my money on the kitchen table. My Mother set about counting and rolling the coins. The few Silver dollars went into an envelope. I had only a few seconds to look at them. "There's over twenty nine dollars here!" My Mother told me. "Is that a lot?" I asked naively. "Yes, it is." The next day we walked to the K-Mart shopping center (Malls were not big at that time). We walked into a big place that I had always wondered about. Mom had often gone there but we sat outside and she never bought anything there.
This time she took me in. I held on tightly to the paper bag that held my twenty nine dollars. It was in fact quite heavy. We waited for what seemed like forever. Finality we got to the front of the line and we approached a tall woman with a thin face and dark hair. She towered over me looking down intently as my Mother told her I was here to open an account. "What is your name son? " She asked sweetly, looking at me the way my Grammy always did, as if she was about to pinch my cheek. "My name is Greg, and I have twenty nine dollars, my Mom says it is a lot of money!" She smiled "Why yes, it is.n What kind of account do you want to open?" She cooed cloyingly. "Savings." My Mother said. "Fine." She said and she took my bag and went to another counter behind the one I was at. At that counter was another lady at another wicket. My bank lady pointed at me and laughed. The other lady was laughing too. They opened the bag and spread the rolls of coin on the counter. They opened the envelope with my silver dollars in it. The lady filled out a long piece of paper and brought it over to my Mother. Mom wrote on it and signed her name. She got me to sign my name. she gave the paper back to the lady who walked over to the other counter. The lady there gave her a small blue book. She inserted the blue book into a typewriter of some kind and the machine made a noise and the lady behind the counter took the book and stamped it. Then the lady came back. She opened the blue book to the first page and handed it to me. "There you are." She cooed "Twenty nine dollars." I looked at the page. It did say twenty nine dollars and it had the date. The book had a stiff cover that felt like leather. The cover had an elongated slot in it and a number printed on the first page was visible through the slot even when the cover was closed. My Mother took the book and thanked the lady. I waved and she waved back a lot longer than she should have, I thought. I looked back after we had left and she was talking to the other lady and they both were laughing. I was a bit stunned I wasn't really sure what had just happened. We left the bank and did some shopping.
That night when Dad got home my Mother said "Tell your Father what you did today." I turned to him a little unsure of what to say. "I gave my twenty nine dollars away to a lady at the K-Mart." I said. "Well not exactly. You put your twenty nine dollars in the bank." she corrected. "Oh, yeah." I said. "So you are a rich man!" My dad said picking me up and squeezing me. His whiskers warm on my cheek. He had five o'clock shadow by three o'clock, my Dad. I loved it when he picked us up like that. I loved the feel of his whiskers on my soft cheeks. Supper was a while away so I looked in his lunchbox to see if he had left any goodies. He always left me something, even if it was a lukewarm bologna sandwich.
"Hey Mom, tomorrow I want to go back to the bank and see my silver dollars!" "You can't do that." My Mother said. "Why not?" I asked, with some trepidation. "Well they won't have your silver dollars anymore." "I thought the lady said I could take my money out when I wanted it?" "Your money yes, but not the actual coins that you gave them." "But what about the silver dollars Mrs. Lynn gave me?" "Someone else will have those." My Mother said. She was smiling. I wasn't. "BUT I want MY silver dollars!" "Well you can get other dollars but not those same dollars." It had never occurred to me that those silver dollars and fifty cent pieces I had given them would not be there when I went back. In my mind I had imagined that there were hundreds of drawers and each person's money was put in a separate drawer and when you went back they opened your drawer and gave you back your money. I had no idea that someone else, some total stranger would be walking out of the bank with my silver dollars. My perfect attendance silver dollars. The ones that still had the tape marks on them where Mrs Lynn had taped them to the card before she had called me up, in front of the whole entire school to get them. And folks to this day, I have never gotten those silver dollars back. They are gone. Gone even surer than they were in the Colonel's belly. I can't even get a knife and cut open the bank and get them back. Another faceless victim of the huge, faceless heartless financial institutions who eat up poor people like me and spit them out. I saw visions of those two tellers laughing as I walked away. They knew what was to come, that's why they were laughing. Oh they knew all right...