Bailout Fail

Interesting lunch excursion to WAMU, now known as Chase. They were renovating. The question “Why?” crossed my mind. Here we have a financial giant who begged for a bailout and now they’re hanging new drapes (figuratively, not literally since that’s not part of the “look”). Was something wrong with the building? No, a WAMU representative confirmed. It was just time to give it the Chase stamp and an ol’ heave-ho to the WAMU layout…to the tune of half a million dollars.

So I try to wrap my head around this bailout spending plan. Chase was given a $25 billion bailout. Assuming they’ve kept all 2,239 WAMU branches they obtained and will rebrand each branch at $.5 million, this equals $1,119,500,000. That’s $1.1 billion spent on redesigning a building that was renovated by WAMU in recent years and had NO structural or electrical problems. In other words, $500,000 wasted, per branch, on changing the layout so it has the Chase “look and feel”.

This is like your daughter borrowing $800 to pay her rent then going to the mall and buying a new pair of jeans because she needed something to match the top she got a month ago...when she has five other pairs in perfect condition stacked in her dresser drawer.

Frankly, I’m not sure establishing a bank is Chase-owned is the best route at the moment. I might be more inclined to hand my money over to a guy with a handwritten sign saying “Bank” taped to his Dodge van. And he doesn’t even require I write out a deposit slip.