The Wal-Martization of America's Banks?

The banking industry in America is no haven of honesty, fairness and consumer friendliness. It is an industry that helped bring us the awful bankruptcy bill and continues to bring us all sorts of unfair and deceptive fees. That said, if the federal government approves Wal-Mart's bid to get into banking, it could get a whole lot worse.

That's right, the world's biggest retailer is trying to get its tentacles into the banking industry - a move that really makes the Wal-mart-is-trying-to-takeover-the-world theories look more and more real. The Associated Press notes that the big concern about such a Wal-Mart bank revolves around U.S. financial stability. "Wal-Mart already is too big, opponents say, with 3,900 stores nearly saturating the U.S. market and unrivaled dominance -- accounting for an estimated 10 percent of the U.S. retail economy," the news service writes. "That means a Wal-Mart bank could pose a risk to the country's financial system, and potentially to taxpayers."

This, of course, says nothing about how a Wal-Mart bank would likely destroy community banking throughout America - much as Wal-Mart has destroyed local business, as documented in Robert Greenwald's recent movie. Hilariously, the AP notes that "the lone Wal-Mart executive who testified [at hearings before the FDIC] -- Jane Thompson, president of Wal-Mart Financial Services -- insisted that the $250 billion-a-year retailer is a good corporate citizen in the communities where it operates, pays its employees fair wages and complies strictly with laws and regulations." The fact that a Wal-Mart excutive can even say that with a straight face should tell you all you need to know about Wal-Mart's new pledges that its banking efforts would be purely inoccuous.

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