A Factory Worker in the Manufacturing Industry, a Product Manager in the Retail Industry, an Informations Specialist in the Finance Industry, and a Leasing Agent in the Commercial Real Estate Industry walk into a bar...
Actually, they walk into the Unemployment Office.
What do they all have in common? They occupy the 4 apartments in my building. My husband is one of them. We rent to the other three.
How did this happen?
I don't know the specifics of the other three. They feel bad enough without me interviewing them for my own personal economic anthropology project about the ins and outs of their business's decisions to let them go.
My husband is - was - the Product Manager mentioned above. His company went bankrupt this week because Chase bank cut off the line of credit they were supposed to use the bailout money for to small businesses like the one my husband works - worked - for.
They sell- sold - tennis clothing, and they have orders that have already been placed. There is merchandise sitting on a dock on the West Coast that has already been sold to retailers. They can't pay the vendor, though, because the line of credit was cut off, so they can't ship the merchandise that was already sold. They retailers can't pay up front - they don't have the cash flow for that - and so when Chase pulled the plug that was the end of their business.
Chase knows that this is how retail works. And my husband's company has spent the last month faxing them paperwork to demonstrate that their business is solvent and their merchandise has been ordered by customers. But Chase is not in the business of keeping the credit flowing. They are in the business of hoarding bailout money for their real shareholders (when we aren't pretending that everyone with a stake is a "shareholder.")
Wednesday was his last day. The president of the company will be working for another month - I think for Chase bank - liquidating everything for them and doing audits - why I don't understand. Chase is assuming ownership of what is left of the business (just the brand name and any cash they can get from liquidation, I guess).
This is what we were told was going to happen if the banks didn't get bailout money. The small businesses! Whatever will they do if credit dries up! Turns out it was all a bluff, I guess.
Company name is Balle de Match. Google it and you'll see all the merchandise that is sitting on the dock, going to a liquidator now instead of pro shops and coaches who have placed the orders for it.
Wouldn't it be ironic if Chase held our mortgage? By chance, they weren't the last in a long line of banks to buy it. But that isn't really so important. The banks have positioned themselves at the top, and the bottom, of the food chain. The same banks cutting off credit to small businesses are going to be stuck with our defaulted mortages as a result.
What will it take for them to see that we are all in this together, and that when they try to hoard everything, their investments will collapse?
Which brings me to YOU - Do you have a story of jobs lost because banks receiving bailout money cut off the credit anyway? Let's get some real stories together. Rec if you think it will help. It is so difficult for us to compare notes on this sort of thing - maybe here, in this public forum, we can come together to paint a picture of the failure of the banks to do what is in their power to stop the downward spiral of job loss - and speak to the mounting rage that our politicians haven't caught on to yet.