“Can ethics govern how business operate with reference to the banking industry?”

What do you think? Comment below.

It was Oct. 17, just four days after JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, agreed to take a $25 billion capital injection courtesy of the United States government, when a JPMorgan employee asked that question. It came toward the end of an employee-only conference call that had been largely devoted to meshing certain divisions of JPMorgan with its new acquisition, Washington Mutual.

Which, of course, it also got thanks to the federal government. Christmas came early at JPMorgan Chase.

The JPMorgan executive who was moderating the employee conference call didn’t hesitate to answer a question that was pretty politically sensitive given the events of the previous few weeks.

Given the way, that is, that Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. had decided to use the first installment of the $700 billion bailout money to recapitalize banks instead of buying up their toxic securities, which he had then sold to Congress and the American people as the best and fastest way to get the banks to start making loans again, and help prevent this recession from getting much, much worse.

In point of fact, the dirty little secret of the banking industry is that it has no intention of using the money to make new loans. But this executive was the first insider who’s been indiscreet enough to say it within earshot of a journalist.

(He didn’t mean to, of course, but I obtained the call-in number and listened to a recording.)

“Twenty-five billion dollars is obviously going to help the folks who are struggling more than Chase,” he began. “What we do think it will help us do is perhaps be a little bit more active on the acquisition side or opportunistic side for some banks who are still struggling. And I would not assume that we are done on the acquisition side just because of the Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns mergers. I think there are going to be some great opportunities for us to grow in this environment, and I think we have an opportunity to use that $25 billion in that way and obviously depending on whether recession turns into depression or what happens in the future, you know, we have that as a backstop.”

Read that answer as many times as you want — you are not going to find a single word in there about making loans to help the American economy. On the contrary: at another point in the conference call, the same executive (who I’m not naming because he didn’t know I would be listening in) explained that “loan dollars are down significantly.” He added, “We would think that loan volume will continue to go down as we continue to tighten credit to fully reflect the high cost of pricing on the loan side.” In other words JPMorgan has no intention of turning on the lending spigot.

It is starting to appear as if one of Treasury’s key rationales for the recapitalization program — namely, that it will cause banks to start lending again — is a fig leaf, Treasury’s version of the weapons of mass destruction.

In fact, Treasury wants banks to acquire each other and is using its power to inject capital to force a new and wrenching round of bank consolidation. As Mark Landler reported in The New York Times earlier this week, “the government wants not only to stabilize the industry, but also to reshape it.” Now they tell us.

Indeed, Mr. Landler’s story noted that Treasury would even funnel some of the bailout money to help banks buy other banks. And, in an almost unnoticed move, it recently put in place a new tax break, worth billions to the banking industry, that has only one purpose: to encourage bank mergers. As a tax expert, Robert Willens, put it: “It couldn’t be clearer if they had taken out an ad.”

Friday delivered the first piece of evidence that this is, indeed, the plan. PNC announced that it was purchasing National City, an acquisition that will be greatly aided by the new tax break, which will allow it to immediately deduct any losses on National City’s books.

As part of the deal, it is also tapping the bailout fund for $7.7 billion, giving the government preferred stock in return. At least some of that $7.7 billion would have gone to NatCity if the government had deemed it worth saving. In other words, the government is giving PNC money that might otherwise have gone to NatCity as a reward for taking over NatCity.

I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to feel as if we’ve been sold a bill of goods.

Source: So When Will Banks Give Loans?

The Accounting Aisle site offers help finding an auditor, bookkeeper or accountant. It could be a big time saver for you as you are looking around for accounting services.

I once even hired an accountant only latter to discover that they were not actually licensed. So working with a firm like Accounting Aisle would have been a real blessing and saved me time and aggravation since they would have located a firm for me to work with.

I also like the fact that they can help you find every accounting specialist including a a bookkeeper to help you keep the books current as you go.

The process of finding accounting help is simple and begins with an inquiry form. From there the Accounting Aisle folks will request up to four quotes and let you then pick the firm you want to work with from those results.

It is very hard emotionally and practically to land a new job in a down economy. While you once served in a position of power and had a staff of many, there is no guarantee that you will in the future. Dealing with those life changes can be extremely tough for those involuntarily changing jobs.

If you are thinking about maybe starting your own business, then you’ll have to think about aspects of running a business that you might have had to deal with before, promotion.

At the bank you had a big marketing department that took care of the sales side of the business, but now that you might be considering launching your own new business, don’t forget that responsibility is now squarely in your lap.

Maybe the first think to consider is printing a business card or doing something much bolder like poster printing to promote your new business.

Use this transition time to ask yourself if you’ve been happy in the banking world. Maybe now is the time to evaluate if that world makes you happy, and if it doesn’t then maybe this is the time to reinvent yourself.

Downsizing can be either a blessing or a curse. For those that try to hold on to once what was, the curse is trying to replace that lost job with another similar position. Or maybe losing the job is a blessing if it gives you an opportunity to take a look at your life, decide what is most important to you and consider downsizing your life to reduce incoming earning pressure so you can enjoy your life rather than stress about it.

So if your job was to vanish, your good banking job, what would you like to do? Would you reinvent yourself, would you go back into banking? What would you do?

We’ve now swung from the job worry times when India outsourcing was all the rage to a time when there are fewer bank jobs to even outsource. I wonder how many of those bank employees that are soon to find they don’t need to put their pants on each morning to go to work will stay in banking or turn to other careers?

Banker one day and then e-procurement or reverse auctions expert the next. Rough economic times should give in banking pause to remember that it is easy to become the person on the other end of the phone being called by the bank for payments. All it takes is a sudden and unforeseen economic crisis like we experienced in September, 2008.

Be thankful for your banking job, it could easily be gone tomorrow.

Even the very same bank employees that were responsible for carrying out bank policies, now find themselves on the opposite site and looking for home equity loans and home equity line of credit to help make ends meet. And rather than be wise shoppers for mortgage interest rates, when you are desperate they don’t care about the rate, just the ‘yes’.

So easy is it to slip from one side of the valley to the next. While bankers are pursuing what they believe to be their ethical pursuit of profits first, I wish there was a way to also inject some amount of reality and humility into their vision for today in the banking world you can have a job one day and your bank can fail the next.

I’m not sure if there is value in remembering that old adage that what goes around, comes around, but it’s true and my banking friends need to remember that.

When faced with logic and a corporate culture like that, the Wall Street bankers should be receiving a national medal instead of outrage and disdain. At least I’m sure some of them think so.

“Why are you mad at us. You wanted the economy stimulated and let us self-regulate. How can you be angry we did what you wanted?”

Bailing out Wall Street will not fix this problem as long as the accepted norm is to put profits before everything else in the financial services industry. No, it will only be a matter of time before abuses in the pursuit of profits will undermine financial stability again.

Over in the article “The Right Thing: The Financial Company You Keep” an excellent point is made,

“It’s dishonest for an institution to advertise `We’re here for you’ when really you’re nothing but an asset that can be bought and sold,” says John Waggoner, author of Bailout: What the Rescue of Bear Stearns and the Credit Crisis Mean for Your Investments. “Expecting kindness from your mortgage lender is like expecting kindness from a soft-shell crab.”

The banker image used to be of a local businessman you could trust, but what of the modern banker. Sure we still have local bankers that care because they live in the communities they serve but the largest banks seem to put little effort in restoring a culture of ethics into banking or financial services.

I’m left pondering if it is even possible for a bank to act ethically in the interest of the customer and the bank or are we not left with a legacy that it is more appropriate to field strip a consumer from their money and bad on them if they actually trusted the bank.

I just posted Citibank Staff Incompetence Costs Me $1,000 and Stranded for a Weekend in Philly and it made me wonder about when it is ethical to say you’re sorry.

When is it okay for a banker to really apologize for a mistake? I’m not talking about the “I’m sorry you’ve had that experience but I can’t help you.”, pathetic excuse. I’m looking for that old fashioned, “I value you you as a banking customer, sincerely apologize for the error and we’ll do everything we can to fix the problem for you?”

Are modern banking ethics more about maximizing profit, avoiding liability and have we lost the ability to deliver good customer service with an insufficient investment in customer service?

What do you think?

After my husband’s death the banker was very friendly, and very pushy, wanting to marry me, take care of the farm, help make my husband’s dreams come true, etc. Foolishly I trusted him — (and started dating him). He went on a spending spree with my money and created enormous problems for me.

Every deadbeat who was behind on loans at his bank, every person he needed to curry favor with, ended up with some of my money. I had to fire them all and redo everything from scratch. The worst was that he authorised all sorts of construction work on my home without consulting me first — then I got hit with the bill. The work was faulty and it cost me over $300,000.00 to fix the problems.

He also misrepresented me in real estate transactions, costing me quite a bit of money.

At one point he didn’t want to pay interest on my CDs at his bank, (which he inherited from his father). A little intervention from the father finally got me my money back, but not without legal intervention.

I am told by a lawyer that there is nothing I can do because there is no ‘banker’s code of ethics’ against dating a client: as doctors and lawyers have.

I know I was a very foolish, very naive, distraught widow. Do I have any options ?

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

The deaths of Walter Buczynski, 59, and his wife, Marci, 37 - the parents of two boys - were being investigated as a murder-suicide, according to the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office.

Prosecutor Robert Bernardi said Evesham Township police went to the couple’s home in the Marlton section of the township around noon after a male caller asked them to check on Marci Buczynski’s welfare. Her body was found in a bedroom.

Authorities would not provide further details on her death, saying only that she was pronounced dead at the scene and that an autopsy would be performed sometime Saturday by the county medical examiner’s office.

About 20 minutes after her body was found, officers from the Delaware River and Bay Authority Police Department received reports that a man - later identified as Walter Buczynski - had parked his car on the bridge and jumped from the span.

Crews continued to search for his body Friday night.

Bernardi said a motive for the murder-suicide was not immediately clear. The couple’s children were being cared for by family members, Bernardi said.

Walter Buczynski was vice president of Columbia, Md.-based Fieldstone Mortgage, a high-flying subprime mortgage lender that made $5.5 billion in mortgage loans and employed about 1,000 people as late as 2006.

However, it has since filed for bankruptcy and now has less than 20 employees. The company had recently filed court papers seeking approval to pay about $1.1 million in bonuses that would be divided among Buczynski and other staffers so the company could wind down its lending operations and go out of business.