How My Bank Made Me Happy Today

It's the little things that can make you the happiest.

Such as the tiny notice on my computer screen today, when I went to my bank's website to pay a couple of bills before the end of the month, assuring me that it would not be needing, nor applying for, nor accepting, any of the TARP bailout cash dangled by the federal government.

This delights me beyond what words can describe for I like my bank and I do not wish to change to another. And I would change immediately if I thought that Uncle Obama and Tiny Tax Cheat Tim Geithner were taking over ownership like they are with several other big banks. It's not that I think it would make a big operational difference in the short term; I merely suggest that Americans who believe in foundational principles of less government is better government should punish efforts to nationalize our banking system.

Long term, it will make a huge difference for it gives the government way too much power over a man's relationship with the people who hold his hard-earned samolians for him. The love of money, Scripture saith, is the root of all evil. Too much temptation for too many faceless, nameless bureaucrats behind the scenes to figure out how to slice a bit of personal profit at our expensive.

Even private banks, in my opinion, are a necessary evil, something you endure even as you wish there was a practical way to do all your financial stuff yourself. I'm told the simplest solution is that you live within your means, keep your appetites simple, do good to your neighbors, and keep a low profile so that you are not a target of the looters, whether they entrepreneurial or government-sanctioned. I'm a late-comer to that philosophy and it may take me awhile to get it right; in the meantime I need to have a bank I can trust and, thus far, my current bank has done a fine job.

Keeping federal fingers out of the vaults is the newest part of that evaluation.