She said cheerfully, 'Can never tell how it'll go. The press giveth and the press taketh away. Tomorrow you and your bank may be attacked.'
He sighed. 'You're so often right.' - But this time she was wrong.
A condensed version of the original news feature was syndicated and used by papers in forty other cities. AP, observing the wide, general interest, did its own report for the national wire; so did UPI. The Wall Street Journal dispatched a staff reporter and several days later featured First Mercantile American Bank and Alex Vandervoort in a front-page review of automated banking. An NBC affiliate sent a TV crew to interview Alex at a money shop and the videotaped result was aired on the network's NBC Nightly News.
With each burst of publicity the savings campaign gained fresh momentum and money shop business boomed.
Unhurriedly, from its lofty eminence, The New York Times brooded and took note. Then, in mid-August, its Sunday Business and Finance section proclaimed: A Banking Radical We May Hear More About.
The Times interview with Alex consisted of questions and answers. It began with automation, then moved to broader terrain.
QUESTION: What's mostly wrong with banking nowadays?
VANDERVOORT: We bankers have had things our own way too long. We're so preoccupied with our own welfare, we give too little thought to the interests of our customers.
QUESTION: Can you quote an example?
VANDERVOORT: Yes. Customers of banks particularly individuals ought to receive much more money in interest than they do. .
QUESTION: In what way?
VANDERVOORT: In several ways - in their savings accounts; also with certificates of deposit; and we should be paying interest on demand deposits that is, checking accounts.
QUBSTION: Let's take savings first. Surely there's a federal law that places a ceiling on savings interest rates at commercial banks.
VANDERVOORT: Yes, and the purpose of it is to protect savings and loan banks. Incidentally, there's another law which prevents savings and loan banks from letting their customers use checks. That's to protect commercial banks. What ought to happen is that laws should stop protecting banks and protect people instead.
QUESTION: By 'protecting people' you mean letting those with savings enjoy the maximum interest rate and other services which any bank win give?
VANDERVOORT: Yes, I do.
QUESTION: YOU mentioned certificates of deposit.
VANDERVOORT: The U. S. Federal Reserve has prohibited large banks, like the one I work for, advertising long-term certificates of deposit at high interest rates. These kinds of CDs are especially good for anyone looking ahead to retirement and wanting to defer income tax until later, low income, years. The Fed hands out phony excuses for this ban. But the real reason is to protect small banks against big ones, the big banks being more efficient and able to give better deals. As usual, it's the public which is last to be considered and individuals who lose out.
QUESTION: Let's be clear about this. You're suggesting that our central bank the Federal Reserve cares more about small banks than the general populace?
VANDERVOORT: Damn right.
QUESTION: Let's move on to demand deposits checking accounts. Some bankers are on record as saying they would like to pay interest on checking accounts, but federal law prohibits it.
VANDERVOORT:Next time a banker tells you that, ask him when our powerful banking lobby in Washington last did anything about getting the law changed. If there's ever been an effort in that direction, I've not heard of it.
QUESTION: You're suggesting, then, that most bankers really don't want that law changed?
VANDERVOORT: I'm not suggesting it. I know it. The law preventing payment of interest on checking accounts is very convenient if you happen to own a bank. It was introduced in 1933, right after the Depression, with the object of strengthening banks because so many had failed in the previous few years.
QUESTION: And that was more than forty years ago.
VANDERVOORT: Exactly. The need for such a law has long passed. Let me tell you something. Right at thus moment, if all the checking account balances in this country were added together, they'd total more than $200 billion. You can bet your life the banks are earning interest on this money, but the depositors the bank's customers aren't getting a cent.
QUESTION: Since you yourself are a banker, and your own bank profits from the law we are talking about, How do you advocate change?
VANDERVOORT: For one thing, I believe in fairness For another, banking doesn't need all those crutches id the way of protective laws. In my opinion we can do better by that I mean render improved public service and be more profitable without them.
QUESTION: Haven't there been recommendations in Washington about some of those changes you've spot of?
VANDERVOORT: Yes. The Hunt Commission report of 1971, and proposed legislation resulting from it, which would benefit consumers. But the whole deal is stalled in Congress, with special interests including our own banking lobby holding up progress.
QUBSTION: DO YOU anticipate antagonism from other bankers because of your frankness here? VANDERVOORT: I really hadn't thought about it.
QUESTION: Apart from banking, do you have any overall view on the current economic scenes
VANDERVOORT: Yes, but an over-all view should not be limited to economics.
QUESTION: Please state your view and don't limit it.
VANDERVOORT: Our greatest problem, and our big shortcoming as a nation, is that almost everything nowadays is geared against the individual and in favor of the big institutions big corporations, big business, big unions, big banking, big government. So not only does an individual have trouble getting ahead and staying there, he often has difficulty merely in surviving. And whenever bad things happen inflation, devaluation, depression, shortages, higher taxes, even wars it isn't the big institutions which get hurt, at least not much; it's the individual, all the time.
QUESTION: DO YOU see historical parallels to this?
VANDERVOORT: I do indeed. It may seem strange to say this, but the closest one, I think, is France immediately before the Revolution. At that time, despite unrest and a bad economy, everyone assumed there'd be business as usual. Instead, the mob composed of individuals who rebelled overthrew the tyrants who oppressed them. I'm not suggesting our conditions now are precisely the same, but in many ways we're remarkably close to tyranny, once more, against the individual. And telling people who can't feed their families because of inflation that, 'You never had it so good,' is uncomfortably like, 'Let them eat cake.' So I say, if we want to preserve our so- called way of life and individual freedom which we claim to value, we'd better start thinking and acting about the interests of individuals again.
QUESTION: And in your own case, you'd begin by making banks serve individuals more. VANDERVOORT: Yes.
***
'Darling, it's magnificent! I'm proud of you, and I love you more than ever,' Margot assured Alex when she read an advance copy a day before the interview was published. 'It's the most honest thing I've ever read. But other bankers will hate you. They'll want your balls for breakfast.' 'Some will,' Alex said. 'Others won't.'
But now that he had seen the questions and replies in print, and despite the wave of success on which he had been riding, he was slightly worried himself.
3
'What saved you from being crucified, Alex,' Lewis D'Orsey declaimed, 'was that it happened to be The New York Times. If you'd said what you did for any other paper in the country, your bank's directors would have disowned you and cast you out like a pariah. But not with the Times. It clothed you in respectability, though never ask me why.'
'Lewis, dear,' Edwina D'Orsey said, 'could you intetrupt your speech to pour more wine?'
