Banking is an institution unlike several other institutions with which many of us may be familiar, such as learning, penal, and mental. Well, maybe banks are not so different from one or more of those other institutions after all. But anyway, banks have been around for a very long time, many centuries in fact. They began when a very poor Italian family decided that they wanted money that they were too lazy to earn and too timid to steal. So they sweet-talked their neighbors, friends, enemies and any other gullible party into lending them some so that they could lend it to others at exorbitant interest charges. As a result they grew obscenely wealthy and were able to change their family name to De Medici, buy outrageously expensive palaces and treat their neighbors with total abomination. In this way they became highly respected and were able to buy the Italian city of Florence, which they ruled for many generations. In order to keep and maintain their level of celebrity, the family performed lots of robberies, murders, cruelty, and outrageous behavior. In addition, they became rather effective rulers and mostly paid for the Renaissance. They were also the envy of their fellow citizens and inspired many others to become bankers and commit the same kinds of thieveries and crimes.

Although my forgoing account of the beginnings of banking is mostly free of facts, it nonetheless contains a kernel of truth and with an almost discernable measure of accuracy describes the behaviors of some of the bankers and other proper, upright members of early (and later) societies. That brings us somewhat awkwardly to the status of banking in more recent times

My own experience with banks began back in 1948 when I graduated from high school and needed a job, mostly because my mother was not excited about having a free-loading son on her hands. I know that, at that time, everyone thought of banker’s hours as ten a.m. to two p.m. The job I landed began at four p.m. and ended at midnight, spanning what was affectionately called the “twilight shift.” My work would be carried out deep in the windowless basement of a downtown Baltimore bank called The Union Trust Company. To enter at that hour I had to ring a bell at a door that was located in an alley and announce myself as though I was entering a speakeasy establishment. An elderly gentleman would unlock the door and allow me to enter. In those days, we, the employees did not have to wear badges, show identification, pass through x-ray equipment, check our bags, empty our pockets or remove our shoes or any other article of clothing.

The unusual hours turned out to be somewhat fortuitous since just a few months after I began working, I decided, with the forceful encouragement of one of my fellow workers, to attend college. I telephoned the college, known at that time as Towson State Teachers College, and learned that they were giving an entrance examination within a day or so. I must have passed the exam.

Banking in the middle of the twentieth century was not terribly different from that in the seventeenth century, except for the things people wore and the language they spoke. The big shots were just as mean and the workers cowered just as they did in the earlier times. Of course, we had machines to help do some of the work. We didn’t have to wear green visors and enter figures into bulky ledgers with quill pens and ink dipped from an inkwell.

Back then, the middle of the twentieth century, banks were somewhat different from those of today. Then banks specialized in being dull and stable, freely lending money to folks who didn’t really need it and refusing those who were in genuine need. Today, banks still specialize in lending money to those who don’t need it and refusing those in need. They are still dull but not so stable.

A half century ago, or thereabouts, people trusted banks to be both honest and reliable. They were tightly regulated by our highly efficient federal government and expected to tow the line. Each big city had its own modest supply of mostly local banks that had been around for years, owned by the same families or corporations and not terribly competitive. Bank employees were usually loyal, honest, hard working and mostly underpaid. At least I was underpaid when I worked in a bank.

Today’s banks specialize in greed and bad judgment. They believe that, since they are always using other people’s money, they don’t have to worry about things like safe investments, careful accounting, honest policies and concern for their fellow humans. Furthermore, they are safe from any unpleasant fallout from their outrageous decisions since they are assured that our own federal government will willingly come to their aid if and when their greed has gotten them into trouble. Their high-ranking officers know that they, at least, will maintain their lofty positions, their obscene salaries and, at the end of each year, will be rewarded for their unconscionable extravagances and revolting avarice with bonuses of colossal proportions, and at the same time, will maintain the lofty esteem of their peers. We should all be bank executives.