I’m sure that by now you’ve heard the story of those Chicago workers who got laid off without notice, whether you wanted to hear about it or not. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing but sympathy for people who get stung in this economic downturn but how the blame has been placed in this case is astonishingly pathetic and indicative of how we’ve got into this financial mess in the first place.
The majority of the blame has been leveled at Bank of America for refusing to continue providing a line of credit to a failed company. BoA stated that it had been working with the company for months, attempting to address the concerns that were going to cause the business to lose its credit to no avail. A few decades ago we never would have even considered deriding a bank for the financial failings of a company. These days? Scapegoat should’ve been chosen as the word of the year.
It wasn’t the bank that was unable to compete or remain successful in the marketplace. It wasn’t up to the bank to enforce or create labor agreements with workers. Yet somehow Bank of America becomes the villain. “Workers win” the AP trumpets. The workers haven’t won. All they’ve managed to do is squeeze the last bit of blood from a financial turnip, using populism in order to force the bank to extend “loans” that will never be repayed. It isn’t the bank’s job to pay your workers! That this even needs to be reinforced explains so much about this past election cycle and our country’s condition as a whole.
Why, it’s almost as if we believed it was every larger entity’s responsibility to save companies that have proven to be utter failures. Can you imagine something more ass backwards and silly? Oh wait.
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