Financial topics

[Higgenbotham]

I turned in my resignation via email. My email said I would be staying an additional 3 days maximum, in accordance with the laws of an at-will employment state, which state that the employment can be terminated at any time for any reason by either party.

Within 15 minutes upper management was at my cubicle wanting to talk. We went into an office and closed the door. The first thing they told me was that they would need 2 weeks notice or I would not be getting a reference.

I said I would not be giving 2 weeks notice because they were placing me at risk by having a person 4 feet away from me who has over 40 previous addresses, over 40 previous phone numbers and a potential alias, all identifiable from google. I stated that my risk tolerance would not allow another 2 weeks.

I further stated, most importantly, that I could not get any work done with her in the cubicle.

I also stated that I had asked my supervisor twice not to put a female in my cubicle. I then turned to a male Gen X manager and said, "If she files a sexual harassment complaint, you know who will end up on the wrong side of that."

The female Gen X supervisor then told me there was something I didn't know previously when I had made that request. She said, "You didn't know we were planning to fire Mr Millennial and that's why we couldn't move him into your cubicle." Nice.

The male Gen X manager then said that they had never had a sexual harassment complaint filed in that workplace (Equifax never had a data breach until they had one, right?). I said you're setting yourselves up for your first one. I said a person with over 40 previous addresses, over 40 previous phone numbers, and a potential alias is a real operator. I added some additional details.

Now the Xer managers took immediate action to get me to stay 2 weeks instead of 3 days. They moved her out of my cubicle the next morning, then mentioned twice that I could rescind my resignation. I stayed the 2 weeks and left.

A month later, the female Gen X supervisor left for a non-supervisory job in another organization and the sociopathic female Gen X employee was fired, both leaving on the same day. The latter also lasted 4 months, same as Mr Millennial.

[Higgenbotham]

Now I will move onto another mainline US business. This is one of the most bizarre business situations I have ever encountered. I am completely, utterly baffled by the illogic and failure to execute that I encountered.

A few weeks ago, I walked into a "Scottsdale" branch and asked if they would like my account. They not only said would they like it but offered to pay me a bonus to transfer it. In other words, they would put some money in my account once it was transferred (within a few days).

It got transferred and I started trading. In roughly 6 weeks I made about 300 trades. Then in early October I thought the market was stretched and stopped trading. I checked the account to see if the bonus money was put in and didn't see it, so called the company and it was verified the bonus money was not in the account. The person said they would get back to me the next morning by 10:00. I didn't get a call. I wasn't too concerned and figured they would put the money in. The day after the next morning I got a call from the Gen X branch manager I opened the account with and he said he would get right on it and get the money in.

Meantime, I checked the account to verify how much revenue it was bringing into "Scottsdale". I calculated that it had brought in over $1900 of revenue to "Scottsdale" in 6 weeks. The branch manager verified that later, saying in fact that it had brought over $3100 in revenue to the company during that time period, all told.

Despite that, 7 days after I made the initial call there was no bonus added to the account. In the meantime, I had called a competitor, made another deal and initiated an account transfer. Now it was going down to the wire. "Scottsdale" had until 10:30 am on a certain day to get the bonus in or the account would be transferred. I told them I would not rescind the transfer unless there was "cash on the barrelhead" so to speak.

They were unable to produce the cash on time and lost the account. I am completely, utterly baffled. I know they have a million excuses like we only pay bonuses on Tuesdays, but my gosh, they had 6 or 7 Tuesdays to pay it from the time the account was opened. That's a lot of revenue to lose for a little bonus money.

[Higgenbotham]

Next up is Geico and State Farm.

I've been with State Farm for about 35 years. Due to my history with the company, no competitor has even been able to produce a quote that beat their rates. In the past, their competitors would tell me that, honestly, they can't beat State Farm for long term customers with good driving histories and would leave it at that. Until Geico did a few weeks ago. They came in $200 per year lower than what I was paying with State Farm. I figured something was up and went into the State Farm office to talk about it.

The State Farm employee (obviously a Gen Xer) told me that Geico had been lowballing their customers, then jacking up the rates on the renewal. So State Farm had lost several customers to Geico, only to get them back. So far, so good. Made sense to me. She then suggested some ways I could save on my policy and they were good suggestions. We made the changes. I told her to credit my account with the savings and take it off the next bill. She said OK, that she would do that. The reason I asked her to do that is I didn't want the company to waste resources printing up and mailing a $40 check and to waste my own resources taking it to the bank.

The check came in the mail anyway. And I got no phone call or email from the Xer with any explanation of why my request couldn't be accommodated.

I can't even get 100% satisfactory service from as good a company as State Farm when they get Gen X involved.

[Higgenbotham]

In some ways, I'm getting smarter as I get older. Or maybe I was just stupid for a long time. Anyway, I finally figured out a foolproof way to handle telephone solicitors that works every time, in every situation.

So let's say the cable company calls wanting to sell some more services. Instead of explaining to them why I don't want more services, I now say, "You will need to speak to Arnold about that."

They may say, "Am I speaking to Mr Higgenbotham?" I may say, yes, you are, but Arnold handles all spending decisions on communications for this household.

They may say, "Is he there now?" To which I say, he's in Sacramento now but I think he's available.

They may say, "Who is Arnold?" To which I may say Arnold Schwarzenegger.

After getting jacked around by Gen X, it's only natural that you can figure out a way to respond in kind.

And it works like a charm.

Got a call from a guy last night wanting to do a survey. I said you'll have to talk to Arnold about that. He's the only one in this household who can do surveys.

[Iceman]

H...glad to see you on a roll in here, even if it's at the mercy of Gen-X sloppiness.

Read all your "situations" to me wife tonight. It was much more informative, enlightening, and entertaining than the damn news (and I'm including ALL the damn news channels).

Other hi-jack wise...#45 and Hannity should have stood, and not sat on their asses and made jokes about it ("Retreat") as it was being played in the background last night.

The irony/weirdness is that I haven't seen/heard a peep of it out from of any news station (conservative, liberal, or washing machine) today/night. It seems it's all about Harvey W. Hmmm?...all the aforementioned 3, Boomers?, not Gen X's? Well I guess "they" (i.e., every generation since Adam and Eve) are just as dangerous when it comes to the intricacies of life (i.e., ain't nothing new under the sun) as they know it at the living time.

Regards from a Boomer too,
and keep up the excellent writing work!

[Higgenbotham]

Oh, I've got more. There's literally no end to this stuff. It ends one day and begins the next.

Back to Bank of America. I ordered some appliances from a local company on the same street I live on. Bank of America rejected the credit card charge. I had to go into my online account and manually OK it. Even though I manually OK'd it and the charge still appeared as pending, the company canceled the order and the appliances were never delivered.

In checking all that, I then noticed a charge for $73.60 from a gas station in Houston. Because I happened to be monitoring the activity closely, I noticed it right away and called the bank immediately. Around the same time, there was another charge from a gas station in Houston for about the same amount. I told the bank there may be one charge or two, but was unsure because one was posted and one was pending. I asked them to sort it all out and credit me appropriately. They assured me that they would.

There were in fact two charges but the bank only credited me for one and is currently only investigating one, even though I called twice to inform them there may be two (the first time) and that there are two (the second time).

Now consider the following facts:
1. I don't live in Houston and never buy gas in Houston.
2. My gas tank holds about 11 gallons of gas.
3. The only thing I ever buy at a gas station or convenience store is gas.
4. When gas was up around $4 per gallon I spent slightly over $40 filling my tank, but my usual charge at a gas station is less than $30.

Yet Bank of America thought that my order for appliances from a store on the same street I live on may have been fraudulent but over $70 worth of gas in a location I never buy gas at and an amount that I can't even fit into my gas tank was a legitimate charge.

I asked them why.

The answer: "We don't see much credit card fraud for gas in Texas. We see a lot in Florida though and if the charge had come from Florida we would have been all over it."

Brilliant! Now that is high level thinking. Wish I were smart enough to run one of the biggest banks in the world. On second thought, maybe it would be better to retreat into the hinterlands and wait for the collapse.

Bank of America is still investigating.

[Higgenbotham]

My guess is a fundamental overlooked explanation for the behaviors I am noting is that the heavy drug and alcohol use of the Xers during their teens and 20s is causing their brain function to fall off a cliff a decade or two earlier than previous generations.

[Higgenbotham]

When I first posted this 6 years ago it seemed like a vague outline of the future. Now I'm certain that this is a clear vision of where we are headed. The chaos has started and I personally see chaos on a daily basis, often multiple times per day - things that were unthinkable 10 or even 5 years ago.

If the sixty years seemed full of brilliance and adventure to a few at the top, to most they were a succession of wayward dangers; of the three galloping evils, pillage, plague, and taxes; of fierce and tragic conflicts, bizarre fates, capricious money, sorcery, betrayals, insurrections, murder, madness, and the downfall of princes; of dwindling labor for the fields, of cleared land reverting to waste; and always the recurring black shadow of pestilence carrying its message of guilt and sin and the hostility of God.

Mankind was not improved by the message. Consciousness of wickedness made behavior worse. Violence threw off restraints. It was a time of default. Rules crumbled, institutions failed in their functions. Knighthood did not protect; the Church, more worldly than spiritual, did not guide the way to God; the towns, once agents of progress and the commonweal, were absorbed in mutual hostilities and divided by class war; the population, depleted by the Black Death, did not recover. The war of England and France and the brigandage it spawned revealed the emptiness of chivalry's military pretensions and the falsity of its moral ones. The schism shook the foundations of the central institution, spreading a deep and pervasive uneasiness. People felt subject to events beyond their control, swept like flotsam at sea, hither and yon in a universe without reason or purpose. They lived through a period which suffered and struggled without visible advance. They longed for remedy, for a revival of faith, for stability and order that never came.

The times were not static. Loss of confidence in the guarantors of order opened the way to demands for change, and miseria gave force to the impulse. The oppressed were no longer enduring but rebelling, although, like the bourgeois who tried to compel reform, they were inadequate, unready, and unequipped for the task. Marcel could not impose good government, neither could the Good Parliament. The Jacques could not overthrow the nobles, the popolo minuto of Florence could not advance their status, the English peasants were betrayed by their King; every working-class insurrection was crushed.

Yet change, as always, was taking place. Wyclif and the protestant movement were the natural consequence of default by the church. Monarchy, centralized government, the national state gained in strength, whether for good or bad. Seaborne enterprise, liberated by the compass, was reaching toward the voyages of discovery that were to burst the confines of Europe and find the New World. Literature from Dante to Chaucer was expressing itself in national languages, ready for the great leap forward in print. In the year Enguerrand de Coucy died, Johan Gutenberg was born, although that in itself marked no turn of the tide. The ills and disorders of the 14th Centruy could not be without consequence. Times were to grow worse over the next fifty-odd years, until at some imperceptible moment, by some mysterious chemistry, energies were refreshed, ideas broke out of the mold of the Middle Ages into new realms, and humanity found itself redirected.

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
1978

[John]

BofA profit up as consumer banking offsets bond trading slump

Bank of America has reported a 13 per cent rise in quarterly profits, as growth in consumer banking and wealth management offset a sharp decline in bond trading revenues.

BofA, an industry powerhouse that operates more than 4,600 branches and has $2.3tn in assets, said its third-quarter net profits were $5.6bn – at the top end of analysts’ consensus expectations.

- FT Breaking News

[Higgenbotham]

The Fed has given Bank of America a monopoly. Nobody can compete with them, no matter how poorly they run their business. The reason is they can lump credit cards and brokerage under one interface in violation of Glass-Steagall.

I would add that Wells Fargo can do that too (given that the Fed forced Wachovia on them which they did not want) but Wells does an extremely poor job of running their brokerage. For me, it is so poorly run as to be unusable.