Feels like one of the most common sources of new commercial construction around here is banks. There's a new one on Main Street near the police complex, one at Turnpike Shopping Center, a couple in Springfield. This is puzzling to me because...

...it seems like we have fewer and fewer reasons to go to banks these days. Internet banking, automatic bill pay, scan your checks for deposit, apply for a mortgage online, the whole nine yards.

I get that many people still want to go into a bank (luddites!), but why do we need MORE physical banks? Did we not have enough before?

The banks want to make it seem like they are doing SOMETHING with your money they make off all those overdraft fees. Those dramatic all-etched glass lobbies with expensive wooden floors and plush furniture won't pay for themselves!

I bank with someone other than BOA (Can't STAND THEM) but they have branches popping up everywhere too. Everytime I go in the bank, EVEN on a FRIDAY- it is NEVER overcrowded. I am ALWAYS in and out of the branch within 10 minutes, no matter how busy. Why there are now 3 new branches within a 15 minute drive of my home all of a sudden? Oh yeah, bank's gotta spend that money somewhere...and use it as a real estate tax writeoff- when a bank branch closes, who can take up residence in a building meant for a bank (like when a drive thru restaurant closes...)...

Funny...they have money to build a new bank branch every 500 yards it seems but can't afford to pay their tellers anything over $10/hour or even let them be fulltime or have health benefits so they can earn a living....sad.

My MAIN beef with banks- so I have a bank of america check in my hands someone else wrote me. I do not have a bank of america account. Why the HELL are you going to charge ME $5 to cash that check when it is a check from one of your accountholders you KNOW is good???? The check cashing joint down the road wouldn't charge me that much!

And I love how they have a $35 overdraft fee for going over 3 cents. Even WITH the overdraft protection I specifically signed up for they were supposed to transfer the money from savings to checking to avoid this exact scenario. TRUE STORY.

This is why I now bank with a credit union. :) Excuse my rant, I'm out of coffee, let me go to the store now.

Where are my cousins and i going to put all our money? I already have 2 mansions, multiple M's and amgs.

there are alot more people in fairfax than you think, over a million. lots of people need lots of money and thats where the banks come in. fairfax is also one of the richest counties in the united states and so banks like to have the money flowing from here. makes sense once you think about it from the perspective of the banks

mancannon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> there are alot more people in fairfax than you
> think, over a million. l
REALLY!?!?! A MILLION! WOW!

Um...there were a million people in Fairfax 5 years ago too. And there seemed to be enough banks.


> lots of people need lots of
> money and thats where the banks come in.

Did you bother to read my message? My point is that in order to get money, you don't need banks as much these days.


> fairfax
> is also one of the richest counties in the united
> states and so banks like to have the money flowing
> from here.

Yes it is. But as I mentioned, 5 years ago there were enough banks, and today there is LESS need to go to a physical bank. So why open MORE physical banks?

fuck banks I do my shit on internets and cell phone with USAA

FUCK U BOA i dropped you like a mexican taco shit with habenaro sauce.,

Considering that most banks allow for checks to be deposited by taking a photo, and everything else is automatic and online, I don't understand the need to continue creating overhead by establishing more facilities to maintain.

Cut your overhead costs, undercut the competition, and make your rates a bit more lucrative than brick and mortar establishments, and focus on marketing - you should beat out the other banks.

Banks are the big bucks for shopping malls. Almost every shopping mall or center has a bank for a reason.

JustanFYI Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Considering that most banks allow for checks to be
> deposited by taking a photo, and everything else
> is automatic and online, I don't understand the
> need to continue creating overhead by establishing
> more facilities to maintain.
>
> Cut your overhead costs, undercut the competition,
> and make your rates a bit more lucrative than
> brick and mortar establishments, and focus on
> marketing - you should beat out the other banks.


The Federal Reserve is the biggest bank in the country and they only have 12 branches.

Jason Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Banks are the big bucks for shopping malls. Almost
> every shopping mall or center has a bank for a
> reason.

Why? Why are banks big money for shopping malls? What reason are they in every mall?

Why are ATM's not enough?

It is strange, if indeed BOA's are popping up everywhere, for at the same time every time I go into one of their branches there are fewer and fewer tellers there and rarely is there a line. It is even stranger yet that when I go in to do a cash withdrawal for pocket money once a month, I am constantly badgered for not using the ATMs instead of my current habit of coming inside to withdraw the cash at the counter.
Because I have access to some of the the banking industry security journals and publications, I am privy to much of the real info not published in the controlled media about how easily the hackers and scammers have been able to hijack innocent people's bank accounts via outside ATMs left in open and non-protected venues, and via their various nefarious practices of using electronic scanners that can read the info off your credit cards when they walk past you; they even can install fake readers on the ATMs that look just like the real scanners underneath the installed fakes; There is a whole host of other stuff crooks and scammers designed to separate hapless unknowing users from their account balances. So, I refuse to use them (outside ATMs or any with people piled up watching the first one in line). The banking staff have tried their darndest to take me to task for this apparently now forbidden behavior of using a teller (too much like saving the jobs of the one or two tellers left in each branch now by my wanting to withdraw living funds once a month)?
This happened once in the Leesburg branch several years ago. It was late on a Saturday morning, their most busy time. The line snaked around the parking lot for the ATM. I opted for the inside counter, and there were also 4 lines backed up inside waiting for the tellers. A very aggressive little Hispanic female teller employee, bristling with self-importance and indignation, proceeded to try and bully me into going outside to use the ATM if all I wanted was cash. I told her no, I would stay here and use a teller. She insisted, so I told her I do not use AT Ms because I consider them a security risk, and in this case today, OBVIOUSLY MUCH SLOWER, as I pointed to the long line of angry people waiting for the same guy at the ATM that was there when I originally arrived, apparently trying to figure out what he was doing wrong that was holding up the line. I noted that the line outside was 4 times longer than any of the ones inside and that it had not moved the whole time since I had been in line inside moving to her station.
Finally she reluctantly handed me my money.
A seed was planted in my mind that day--if this continued to happen, I would soon be searching for another bank. A similar incident happened recently again at a Reston branch, and I was able to terminate the argument, which continued with the official following me out the door until I left the bank, insisting that it would be more convenient for me to use another branch with an ATM closer to home than to have to come to Reston to cash a check, since I don't live in Reston. I told her two things--I was here to shop at Trader Joes next door, so any "convenience for me" in this case was at THIS branch--and second, if I have to put up with this nonsense about not using the tellers (to do what they are being paid to do), then I will SOON JUST HAVE TO FIND ANOTHER BANK where the tellers are still happy to do what they were hired to do in the first place!
Then, when she insisted that the BOA would put back all funds if they were indeed stolen out of an account, I asked her if they would also pay the $1,000,000 + that it takes to get back your identity once it gets stolen, and you lose your job due to credit issues as a result, etc. etc.. (There was no answer offered at all for that question)! Guess they never thought that far out of their box!

Bank Games Watcher Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> > Because I have access to some of the the banking
> industry security journals and publications, I am
> privy to much of the real info not published in
> the controlled media about how easily the hackers
> and scammers have been able to hijack innocent
> people's bank accounts via outside ATMs left in
> open and non-protected venues, and via their
> various nefarious practices of using electronic
> scanners that can read the info off your credit
> cards when they walk past you; they even can
> install fake readers on the ATMs that look just
> like the real scanners underneath the installed
> fakes;

Oh wow! You know about this because of access to "banking industry security journals"? You must be special.

The rest of us hear about ATM skimmers from...the media.
http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/02/pf/atm_security/index.htm


> I asked her if they would also pay the
> $1,000,000 + that it takes to get back your
> identity once it gets stolen, and you lose your
> job due to credit issues as a result, etc. etc..

A MILLION dollars if your identity is stolen? Astounding!

I'm glad I do not live the kind of paranoid life you do.

How much money does a bank figure it needs in an area before they open a branch?

Kardinal Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> So why open MORE physical
> banks?


I think the real estate is an asset.

vgnlinfxn Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Kardinal Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
>
> > So why open MORE physical
> > banks?
>
>
> I think the real estate is an asset.

But they don't own the real estate. They only own the building, which costs more to build than it can be sold for and depreciates over time.

@Kardinal - more banks cause more businesses so more deposits, maybe?

new shopping center will have stores, ppl will pay cash so business will need a place to deposit. And not every company can afford armored car. Thats my guess.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/03/2012 04:47PM by Gordon Blvd.

Gordon Blvd Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> @Kardinal - more banks cause more businesses so
> more deposits, maybe?

I don't see the connection. Why would more banks don't mean more business or more deposits. Why would they?

> new shopping center will have stores, ppl will pay
> cash so business will need a place to deposit.
> And not every company can afford armored car.
> Thats my guess.

OK, I could see that. Less distance to walk with vulnerable cash.

Still, that wouldn't explain why new banks are going up. Not many new malls or shopping centers going up, no?

The Too Big To Fail Banks Are Now Much Bigger And Much More Powerful Than Ever

The Democrats, the Republicans and especially Barack Obama promised that something would be done about the too big to fail banks so that they would never again be a threat to destroy our financial system.

Well, those promises have not been kept and the too big to fail banks are now much bigger and much more powerful than ever. The assets of the five biggest U.S. banks were equivalent to about 43 percent of U.S. GDP before the financial crisis. Today, the assets of the five biggest U.S. banks are equivalent to about 56 percent of U.S. GDP. So if those banks were “too big to fail” before, then what are they now? They continue to gobble up smaller banks at a brisk pace, and they continue to pile up debt and risky investments as if a day of reckoning will never come. But of course a day of reckoning is coming, and when it arrives they will be expecting more bailouts just like they got the last time.

The size of these monolithic financial institutions is truly difficult to comprehend. They completely dominate our financial system and everywhere you look they are constantly absorbing more wealth and more power. The following comes from a recent Bloomberg article….

Five banks — JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Bank of America Corp. (BAC), Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. — held $8.5 trillion in assets at the end of 2011, equal to 56 percent of the U.S. economy, according to central bankers at the Federal Reserve.

Five years earlier, before the financial crisis, the largest banks’ assets amounted to 43 percent of U.S. output. The Big Five today are about twice as large as they were a decade ago relative to the economy

Despite all of the talk from the politicians, they just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

So why isn’t anything ever done?

Well, one reason is because these gigantic financial entities funnel huge quantities of cash into political campaigns.

For example, Barack Obama gives nice speeches about the dangers of the too big to fail banks, but he is also more than happy to take their campaign contributions. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup were all rankedamong his top 10 donors during the 2008 campaign.

So do you really expect that Barack Obama is going to bite the hands that feed him?

Of course he is not going to do that.

The truth is that the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve have done everything they can to make life very comfortable for the big Wall Street banks.

During the last financial crisis, the too big to fail banks were absolutely showered with bailouts.

Meanwhile, hundreds of small and mid-size banks were allowed to die.

When representatives from those small and mid-size banks contacted the federal government for help, often they were told to try to find a larger bank that would be willing to buy them.

Sadly, the last financial crisis simply accelerated the consolidation of the banking industry in the United States that has been going on for several decades.

Today, there are less than half as many banks in the United States as there were back in 1984.

So where did all of those banks go?

They were either purchased by bigger banks or they were allowed to go out of existence.

This banking consolidation trend has allowed the big Wall Street banks to absolutely explode in size.

Back in 1970, the 5 biggest U.S. banks held 17 percent of all U.S. banking industry assets.

Today, the 5 biggest U.S. banks hold 52 percent of all U.S. banking industry assets.

So where will this end?

That is a good question.

The funny thing is that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and other Fed officials keep giving speeches where they warn of the dangers of having banks that are “too big to fail”. For example, during a recent presentation to students at George Washington University, Bernanke made the following statement about the U.S. banking system….

“But clearly, it is something fundamentally wrong with a system in which some companies are ‘too big to fail.’”

So does that mean that Bernanke is against the too big to fail banks?

Of course not.

The truth is that he showered those banks with trillions of dollars in bailout money during the last financial crisis.

The amount of money in secret loans that some of the big Wall Street banks received from the Federal Reserve was absolutely staggering. The following figures come directly from a GAO report….

Citigroup - $2.513 trillion
Morgan Stanley - $2.041 trillion
Bank of America - $1.344 trillion
Goldman Sachs - $814 billion
JP Morgan Chase - $391 billion

Bernanke has shown that he is willing to move heaven and earth to protect those big banks.

So what did those banks do with all that money?

They certainly didn’t lend it to us. Lending to individuals and small businesses by those big banks actually went down immediately after those bailouts.

Instead, one thing that those banks did was they started putting massive amounts of money into commodities.

One of those commodities was food.

Over the past few years, big Wall Street banks have made huge amounts of money speculating on the price of food. This has caused food prices all over the globe to soar and it has caused tremendous hardship for hundreds of millions of families around the planet. The following is from a recent article in The Independent….

Speculation by large investment banks is driving up food prices for the world’s poorest people, tipping millions into hunger and poverty. Investment in food commodities by banks and hedge funds has risen from $65bn to $126bn (£41bn to £79bn) in the past five years, helping to push prices to 30-year highs and causing sharp price fluctuations that have little to do with the actual supply of food, says the United Nations’ leading expert on food.

Hedge funds, pension funds and investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Barclays Capital now dominate the food commodities markets, dwarfing the amount traded by actual food producers and buyers.

Goldman Sachs alone has earned hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from food speculation.

Can you imagine what kind of mindset it takes to do this?

Can you imagine taking food out of the mouths of hungry families on the other side of the world so that you and your fellow employees can pad your bonus checks?

It really is disgusting.

But that is the way the game is played.

It is set up so that the big guy will win and the little guy will lose.

The other day I wrote about how this is particularly true when it comes to our system of taxation.

Well, since that article I have discovered some new numbers that were just released by Citizens for Tax Justice. Some of the things that they have uncovered are absolutely amazing….

Between 2008 and 2011, Verizon made a total profit of $19.8 billion and yet paid an effective tax rate of -3.8%.

Between 2008 and 2011, General Electric made a total profit of $19.6 billion and yet paid an effective tax rate of -18.9%.

Between 2008 and 2011, Boeing made a total profit of $14.8 billion and yet paid an effective tax rate of -5.5%.

Between 2008 and 2011, Pacific Gas & Electric made a total profit of $6 billion and yet paid an effective tax rate of -8.4%.

So why should middle class families continue to be suffocated by outrageous tax rates when hugely profitable corporations such as General Electric are able to get away with paying nothing?

Our current tax system is an utter abomination and should be completely thrown out.

But as is the case with so many other things, our current system is going to persist because the “big guys” really enjoy the status quo and they are the ones that fund political campaigns.

It would be bad enough if the “big guys” were beating us on a level playing field.

But the truth is that the game has been dramatically tilted in their favor and they know that the politicians are going to take care of them whenever they need it.

So what is going to happen the next time the too big to fail banks get into trouble?

They will almost certainly get bailed out again.

Unfortunately, the big Wall Street banks continue to treat the financial system as if it was a gigantic casino. The derivatives bubble just continues to grow larger and larger, and it could burst and absolutely devastate the entire global financial system at any time.

According to the New York Times, the too big to fail banks have complete domination over derivatives trading. Every month a secret meeting that includes representatives from JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Citigroup is held in New York to coordinate their control over the derivatives marketplace. The following is how the New York Times describes those meetings….

On the third Wednesday of every month, the nine members of an elite Wall Street society gather in Midtown Manhattan.

The men share a common goal: to protect the interests of big banks in the vast market for derivatives, one of the most profitable — and controversial — fields in finance. They also share a common secret: The details of their meetings, even their identities, have been strictly confidential.

When the derivatives market fully implodes, there will not be enough money in the world to bail everyone out. According to the Comptroller of the Currency, the too big to fail banks have exposure to derivatives that is absolutely outrageous. Just check out the following numbers….

JPMorgan Chase – $70.1 Trillion

Citibank – $52.1 Trillion

Bank of America – $50.1 Trillion

Goldman Sachs – $44.2 Trillion

So what happens when that house of cards comes crashing down?

Well, those big banks will come crying to the federal government again.

They will want more bailouts.

They will claim that if we don’t give them the money that they need that the entire financial system will collapse.

And yes, if several of the too big to fail banks were to collapse all at once the consequences would be almost unimaginable.

But of course all of this could have been avoided if we would have made much wiser decisions upstream.

Our financial system is more vulnerable than it ever has been before, and the too big to fail banks just continue to grow.

The lessons from the financial crisis of 2008 have gone unheeded, and we are steamrolling toward an even greater crash.

What a mess.

Bank Games Watcher Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It is strange, if indeed BOA's are popping up
> everywhere, for at the same time every time I go
> into one of their branches there are fewer and
> fewer tellers there and rarely is there a line.
> It is even stranger yet that when I go in to do a
> cash withdrawal for pocket money once a month, I
> am constantly badgered for not using the ATMs
> instead of my current habit of coming inside to
> withdraw the cash at the counter.
> Because I have access to some of the the banking
> industry security journals and publications, I am
> privy to much of the real info not published in
> the controlled media about how easily the hackers
> and scammers have been able to hijack innocent
> people's bank accounts via outside ATMs left in
> open and non-protected venues, and via their
> various nefarious practices of using electronic
> scanners that can read the info off your credit
> cards when they walk past you; they even can
> install fake readers on the ATMs that look just
> like the real scanners underneath the installed
> fakes; There is a whole host of other stuff
> crooks and scammers designed to separate hapless
> unknowing users from their account balances. So, I
> refuse to use them (outside ATMs or any with
> people piled up watching the first one in line).
> The banking staff have tried their darndest to
> take me to task for this apparently now forbidden
> behavior of using a teller (too much like saving
> the jobs of the one or two tellers left in each
> branch now by my wanting to withdraw living funds
> once a month)?
> This happened once in the Leesburg branch several
> years ago. It was late on a Saturday morning,
> their most busy time. The line snaked around the
> parking lot for the ATM. I opted for the inside
> counter, and there were also 4 lines backed up
> inside waiting for the tellers. A very aggressive
> little Hispanic female teller employee, bristling
> with self-importance and indignation, proceeded to
> try and bully me into going outside to use the ATM
> if all I wanted was cash. I told her no, I would
> stay here and use a teller. She insisted, so I
> told her I do not use AT Ms because I consider
> them a security risk, and in this case today,
> OBVIOUSLY MUCH SLOWER, as I pointed to the long
> line of angry people waiting for the same guy at
> the ATM that was there when I originally arrived,
> apparently trying to figure out what he was doing
> wrong that was holding up the line. I noted that
> the line outside was 4 times longer than any of
> the ones inside and that it had not moved the
> whole time since I had been in line inside moving
> to her station.
> Finally she reluctantly handed me my money.
> A seed was planted in my mind that day--if this
> continued to happen, I would soon be searching for
> another bank. A similar incident happened
> recently again at a Reston branch, and I was able
> to terminate the argument, which continued with
> the official following me out the door until I
> left the bank, insisting that it would be more
> convenient for me to use another branch with an
> ATM closer to home than to have to come to Reston
> to cash a check, since I don't live in Reston. I
> told her two things--I was here to shop at Trader
> Joes next door, so any "convenience for me" in
> this case was at THIS branch--and second, if I
> have to put up with this nonsense about not using
> the tellers (to do what they are being paid to
> do), then I will SOON JUST HAVE TO FIND ANOTHER
> BANK where the tellers are still happy to do what
> they were hired to do in the first place!
> Then, when she insisted that the BOA would put
> back all funds if they were indeed stolen out of
> an account, I asked her if they would also pay the
> $1,000,000 + that it takes to get back your
> identity once it gets stolen, and you lose your
> job due to credit issues as a result, etc. etc..
> (There was no answer offered at all for that
> question)! Guess they never thought that far out
> of their box!

Bank Games Watcher =
Attachments:

infowars Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> More quackery

[yawn]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/04/2012 12:39PM by Kardinal.

www.cbc.ca/marketplace/2010/whos_minding_the_store/main.html

"Whose Minding the Store" CBC-TV March 12, 2010 program

Soon after the the 2nd Great Depression came about in 2008 I noticed that several local banking entities like Burke & Herbert, which for much of its life had been very conservative in its actions, rapidly expanded thru out the Northern Virginia area and then after a year or so stopped. Was this something Burke & Herbert had been planning for, the expansion, and the desperate economic situation seemed like the right opportunity to expand or Burke & Herbert abandoned its long time conservative approach and went off half cocked and expanded like crazy ane then stopped when they thought maybe we over did it?

Apple Credit Union also expanded like crazy shortly after we entered the 2nd Great Depression

@Chris - B&K just expanded to the new "local" scene, is all. Before they felt "local" meant a part of NoVA now they feel "local" means all of NoVA - no conspiracy theory at all, yo.

Each B&K I've ever been in they run it like a real bank, like an Institutions, not a retail business like all the Bank of America clones out there