“For the love of money is the root of all evil:” I Timothy 6:10

During the 1980s and 1990s I worked in the banking sector. I started at the bottom of the totem pole in what was referred to as the back room area of the bank, doing proof encoding. Since that time, it has all been automated by high speed readers; physical checks aren’t even required as long as the bank has an image or photo of the check. Banks no longer return checks to people, they are scanned and the record is maintained digitally. But in 1983 it was an important part of the banking process to keep the balance sheets up to date for the bank.

My next position was as a teller. I enjoyed it for a period of time, but in the industry, it was usually a starting point and not a good paying position in the bank. The place to move up to and the goal for most working at that level, was to work at the desk, in opening new accounts. You had the ability to make commissions and it was not as much grunt work as a teller.

Traditionally, those in a sales and service position waited for their customers to come to them and then they would advise them on what banking products were available. About the time I moved from being a teller into the sales force the large national banks were in aggressive acquisition mode. Which meant they needed to up their cash reserves so they could obtain Federal Reserve approval of their mergers and acquisitions. This meant they needed to re-evaluate their business models and plan to expand their customer base, and save as much cash on hand as possible. Part of that was to keep staffing levels low, by saving money on the manpower of the grunts, tellers in particular. Of course it was unthinkable that those at the top, CEOs, etc. could even consider reducing their salaries.

Anyone who has seen the movie “Office Space” will remember when the “Two Bobs” came in to the company, to interview all the worker bees. They claimed it was simply informational on how they could make work conditions better at the company. Everyone knew that the real intent, was  to inform the company which employees were useful and which were expendable. In other words, they were consulting hatchet men.

The snarling oppressive teeth of ruthless economics of end-times proportion had long been in evidence in the banking practices of Great Britain and continental European capitalism since the 18th and 19th centuries, and most dramatically in 20th Century United States. Now, however, not just banks but the whole of financial system was sinking to new heights as it moved towards a new era of money-love that would drive the more oppressive systems of finance of the infant years of the Twenty First Century. 

The intended result of the above moves was to make the company run lean and mean, to get the low level employees all multi-tasking, in order to avoid having to hire new employees. As with the Office Space, Consulting Firm, “the Bobs” hired by the bank made up models for the bank to update the way they conducted their business and voila, they unveiled the “Cross-Sell System”. The bank bought it lock stock and barrel along with new computers and cross-sell software, to remind the sales reps and the tellers to suggest new products to their regular customers while transacting regular business.

As this was all happening, the bank I worked for was busy acquiring more financially vulnerable banks. In fact, I transferred to a new region of the bank, recently acquired due to a Federal Bailout deal of a failed bank. The Rhode Island bank I was employed by bought a Massachusetts bank that was insolvent, to save the huge payout of FDIC insurance to the depositors. This enlarged their geography into three more states in New England, and made them among the biggest in the region. At the same time, the state of RI had closed several Credit Unions due to insolvency and an inability of the Credit Union Insurance Fund, to cover the deposits.

On the heels of the S&L crisis of the 80s, the banking market got progressively smaller and made many people distrust small state banks and credit unions, and they began to migrate to the larger national banks. This served the purposes of these large ambitious institutions who were devouring and taking over the smaller fish. They began merging with medium sized banks in order to avoid being absorbed in a corporate take-over by a larger entity.

While this “conversion” of the cross selling system was being employed in MA, I was promoted into a new sales position, as an Electronic Banking Sales Rep. Debit cards had been around since the mid-80s nationwide, but in New England they were just being offered to their market in the early 90s. I was in the first team of this unique sales force, responsible for promoting all aspects of banking electronically with emphasis on the relatively new debit cards.

Enter: A Brave New World of Banking
In New England the customers were pretty set in the conventional way of doing banking, so it was a real uphill battle to convince customers of the benefit of a Debit card or for that matter an ATM card.

Most people understood that this would eliminate teller jobs, although management denied it. The new salesforce was charged with teaching customers how to use these new conveniences and promote their benefits.Today, the reduction of a teller force in the branch has come to pass at banks. People are trained to bank electronically from their computers and phones and many never see the inside of a bank branch, with the possible exception of applying for or closing on a loan. Even that can be done via personal computer and electronic transfer.

The sales culture resulting from the aggressive growth of the large banks became very oppressive to its employees. The branch managers were held to very aggressive sales goals and their meetings were consumed with how they could make their impossible numbers of accounts they were given to sell, coupled with lamenting the “good old days” when service counted for more than sales. I witnessed all of this transformation in my time in the branch banking system. Managers were pressured to keep their staff after hours to make cold calls to existing customers, to “cross-sell” whatever the product of the month was.

I had been promoted to new accounts about the same time and had to be involved in these after-hours sessions on many occasions. They tried to make the sessions more palatable with pizza but that ploy was a paltry assurance, given the task and the pressure exerted. It got so bad at one point that one of the managers began opening unwanted debit card accounts for his customers so he could top the other managers in his district. This was in the early 90s and many knew he did it and complained but no one reported him to my knowledge. The District Manager had to know about it, but it only made him look good so he never did anything to discourage it or discipline the branch manager’s dishonesty and illegal activities, because he stood to get a very large bonus at year’s end.

Aggressive sales practices continued to inflate balance sheets to bigger and bigger levels as time went on throughout the 90s by selling Mutual Money Market Funds, Home Equities, Brokerage Accounts, and eventually, high risk mortgages not based on real equity or ability to repay. This large growth period in banking mirrored an inflated real estate market that practically fed on itself. The aggressive banking culture in the United States, that was born out of banking deregulation allowed banks to become too big, with Federal Reserve approval.

I cite these things as examples of what was typical throughout the nation’s banking industry long before the revelations that Wells Fargo Bank was opening fake and unwanted accounts. The bank I worked for, I am certain was not unique at the time and this approach to business fueled what happened in the banking industry, ultimately contributing to the flim-flam padoodle that resulted in the economic crisis of 2008, or the scandalously inhuman “Too Big To Fail” decision of the United States that condemned so many middle class citizens to the poor house from which they and their family shall never return. 

These are the elements that made the Wells Fargos what they have become, ruthless machines driven to ever increasing growth and an assumption it would create bigger and bigger profits, as it used underlings cogs in the machinery of money making. The scheme – actually scam – worked until the mask was pulled off the of unbelievable greed and ruthlessness, when reality hit the fan in 2008. The mortgage and housing crisis was the real end of the United States economic dominance in the world. Even with all the subsequent legislation to try to reel the banks in, they have become bigger still with governmental approval and even federal financial assistance.

The banks have become even more aggressive and competitive than ever, check your mail. I can’t go a day without two or more offers in the mail for credit cards and loans.  Mailings proudly tell people they have been pre-approved at interest rates of 32 per cent. In all of history, in every country on earth, these are loansharking numbers, in most places worthy of imprisonment or death.

I have seen branches sending employees out to the branch lobbies to try to interest incoming customers in the product of the month. Not unlike the fragrance people at a high end department store. The greed feeds on itself and the institutions take bigger and bigger investment risks.

Prophecy more than suggests that this will continue until it becomes a matter of survival to become a part of the one world system in order to continue to do business anywhere. Without credit no one will will be able to procure the necessities of life – like bread and water, or clothing and shelter. It is prophesied that it will be mandated by ultimate authority that no one can buy anything unless they have the mark of the approval of the ‘One’. Most will agree to it to, for without faith they will have no choice.

The Cogs of Greed and Oppression the Machinery of ‘Modern Times’

The scenario presented in Modern Times, the Chaplin movie, is quite insightful and an appropriate analogy for the wheels and cogs of worldly progress.

With the current Wells Fargo revelation, we see the greed of the banking industry has reached new heights we are only beginning to discover. It remains for us to see what is the result of the latest lending and Mortgage fraud that is currently being employed. The bailout plans enacted by the Obama Administration didn’t really bail anyone out. They rewrote mortgages with longer terms and higher interest, providing nothing real in terms of economic relief. Some people may be in their homes with a slightly lower payment, but the balances are being recouped over the longer terms and higher interest rates assigned to the unfortunate homeowner. The consumer protection legislation and the Obama programs enacted to protect consumers was all smoke and mirrors which amounts to more fraud. The homeowners are now, even more indebted and more at risk. The supposed banking reforms championed by Elizabeth Warren led to higher fees and interest on credit cards and even more relentless collection practices by the lenders.

While I was out there promoting the convenience of ATM and Debit cards, I believed I was performing a service for people, educating them to something that could be a real benefit to them. I was indoctrinated into the major bank’s system of doing business, just as everyone has become in today’s electronic computer age. People no longer do any banking business in person with a handshake and a relationship with their neighborhood banker. Today, it is just one more impersonal cog in the machine that drives our economy that is moving into the global system about to be unified into a single system. The sum of the parts is that this is and will be the antichrist system. The money isn’t real, it is all code in a binary system of large computer banks doing the talking to each other, while the authors meet in private and scheme how they can make the public subject to their ambitions and the machine that controls money, which we all have to admit rules over how we live. If we want to eat, have a home, buy anything, we have to have an account that says we have some value in it. Wells Fargo is corrupt and has injured many people in their misdeeds. However, they are only one example of all the unjust stewards, controlling the economies throughout the world. The following is an early example of the financial system seizing upon the unfortunate.

“And there was a great cry of the people and of their wives against their brethren the Jews.
  For there were that said, We, our sons, and our daughters, are many: therefore we take up corn for them, that we may eat, and live.
  Some also there were that said, We have mortgaged our lands, vineyards, and houses, that we might buy corn, because of the dearth.
  There were also that said, We have borrowed money for the king’s tribute, and that upon our lands and vineyards.
  Yet now our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren, our children as their children: and, lo, we bring into bondage our sons and our daughters to be servants, and some of our daughters are brought unto bondage already: neither is it in our power to redeem them; for other men have our lands and vineyards.”    Nehemiah 5:1-5

The good news for those who know Jesus Christ is that this was all prophesied that it would happen this way. The world will move to a single economy and a one world system, including a one world religion, in submission to the Antichrist. There will be those that oppose the vile one and his system, but they will not be able to stand against it unless the Lord has sealed them until the end. There will be those who will be spared the full wrath of the antichrist system in the end and that of the Antichrist. Those are they who looked for Jesus coming and believed and kept themselves unspotted from the world. The rest will have to concede to Antichrist and take his mark or lose their lives to be saved from the second death. Don’t put any faith in the banking system or the FDIC insurance or your 401k or the Federal Reserve. It will all burn away in the judgement to come. Instead, look up for Jesus is Coming back soon.