What's in a name?

Your name is all you have, at least that's the lesson my mother instilled in me as a young boy. She said if you treat people with honesty, dignity and respect, your name would be an asset. That was another time and place if we are to go by some of today's examples.

Wachovia announced this week it had lost $8.9 billion in the second quarter, mainly in its mortgage divisions. If you accept the comments of CEO Bob Steel, these losses came about from faulty management decisions within the mortgage division. Yeah, the same old story we've heard so many times the past few months, it seems like the needle is stuck in a groove.

What's the solution for Wachovia? Cutting 10,750 jobs, that's what. Putting people on the street. It sounds more and more like the 1930s after the banking crisis.

What does all this have to do with a post about names? Well, Wachovia is a good example of how one company, at least, continues to trash its name and its reputation.

If you're from North Carolina, you probably remember the hometown First Union National Bank branch. In the 1960s these were small places, with people you knew working the teller windows and in the offices. Small town values were the norm along with small town Chamber of Commerce sensibilities. But that has changed.

For First Union National Bank, it began to change in the 1980s when the banks management decided it was no longer profitable to be a small bank playing at banking in a middling state. First Union National Bank had to grow and the place to grow was Florida.

Do you remember the Florida of the 1980s? That was the decade of fast money in a state powered by the legalized laundering of drug money through the real estate and development industries. No one was crude enough to come out and say it, but First Union National Bank wanted into that action, as long as it was legal.

Well, once First Union National Bank moved outside North Carolina, the old small town name had to go. So, FUNB it became, then just First Union.

Over the next two decades, however, First Union, like all other banks in this country, began to sell themselves to the big customer and to forget or downright gouge their small customer.
Granny with her small checking account suddenly was eaten alive by overdraft fees, late fees, fees to answer the phone, or fees to talk to a live person.

It was treatment like this that led to the spurt of small town bank development in North Carolina. Hey, Boone has a couple of these going right now and people love them. I don't hear people talk about Wachovia that way. Oh, Wachovia, I almost forgot.

After First Union had succeeded in trashing its own name in the eyes of many of its customers, it bought Wachovia Bank, a smaller state competitor with a really top notch reputation and name recognition. You guessed it, suddenly First Union became Wachovia, playing off the positives Wachovia had earned but First Union only bought.

Well, it seems this banking giant we know as Wachovia has succeeded in tarnishing its name again. You'd think they'd learn a lesson or two along the way.