Banking Left and Banking Right...With No Balance

For those of us with limited resources and uncluttered savings and checking accounts, perhaps the fear quotient is not as high as with others who have so much more to lose. As the "bank stress tests" are prepared for unveiling this Thursday, May 7, you can hear and feel the anxiety of a litany of people undergoing their own stress test.

What happens to my considerable holdings? What happens to the economy if my bank gets its hands slapped, or worse, tied behind its back?

Though I am not among the anxiety-ridden, I do confess to a certain amount of uneasiness bred by the near-hysterical headlines and announcements pronouncing this bank or that financial institution near death. I have relatively meager funds in two banks, Chase and Citibank. At the moment, there is more in Chase because of mortgage considerations and a few other uninteresting reasons. But I have banked at Citibank for nearly 30 years, beginning at a time when I needed to offer anything in my pocket to have enough to open an account ...and that included some chewing gum, a few paper clips, and an old key or two. Frankly, my circumstances didn't seem that far removed from the days when all my "finances" were highlighted in the Interest Earned line item of those savings passbooks one kept in the right corner of the sock drawer.

Transporting feverishly back to present day financial gloom and doom, I was moved recently to wonder what had happened to this relative economic optimism of the past few weeks. Two completely different episodes dissuaded me from falling for this rose-colored, silver lining rhetoric. First, the afore-mentioned "bank stress tests" came to public light in the foreboding manner it can't help but assume...and my bank, the one to which I have pledged undying loyalty for 30 years, was prominently featured as a potential problem! This wasn't a complete shock since, after all, it seems Citibank is always teetering on the brink, but still, weren't economic tides shifting?

The second episode occurred as a result of the first episode. I researched the potential for my bank's big trouble to have a major impact on my financial life, such as it is. The very first result of this research was a Times Magazine article chronicling the history of Citibank's (then City Bank) teetering on the brink and being saved by the wealthy likes of John Jacob Astor. This was a bank, I learned, that bankrolled the Union during the Civil War. It has wavered positively and negatively since, with its CEO actually getting arrested in conjunction with activities associated with the crash of 1929.

So, one might ask, how will I respond knowing my bank has a history of staving off elimination? What will I do understanding my bank is back in the crosshairs? I transferred whatever funds I possess from Chase to Citibank today. Blind loyalty, perhaps, but who won at Gettysburg?