Goldilocks and the Three Banks

Once upon a time there was a pretty young lady whose name was Goldilocks. For her birthday, her grandfather gave her ten dollars and advised her to put it in a safe place where it could grow and become more than just ten dollars. Goldilocks asked her grandfather where that might be, and he said that the best place to take money where it might grow would be to a bank.
Now Goldilocks had saved some other money she had received on previous birthdays as well as her allowance which she earned by doing chores around the house, but she had kept all of her money in her “piggy” bank until now. Actually the piggy bank was in the shape of a small bear symbolic of her namesake’s encounter in the fairy tale. Her total accumulated savings now amounted to $100.00.
So, Goldilocks decided to take her money to the nearest bank, which was a very small local bank in her home town of Bear Bones. When she entered the bank, she was greeted by the President who had his desk in a private office in a corner of the building. The only other people in the bank were the teller behind the counter and Mrs. Ursine who was doing some sort of business with the teller. The bank President recognized Goldilocks as one of the town’s children who walk by his bank on the way to school and introduced himself as Paw Settee.
When Paw asked Goldilocks, “How may I help you?” she asked what kind of instruments he had available so that she could deposit her $100.00 and start earning some interest or dividends from her investment. Paw shook his head and said that the only two instruments he had available were CDs and savings accounts, both of which earned on average a measly .75 % per annum. Goldilocks clearly had higher expectations for her investment, so she thanked Paw and returned home. Clearly the local village bank was too small.
Goldilocks then decided it was time to get on the internet and see what other kinds of banks were out there. She poked around all sorts of sites and decided she would look into two others: one was Bear Stearns, which she initially liked because it had the first same name as her town and sounded sort of familiar. However, low and behold it had disappeared from existence. It had been a much larger bank than her village bank and yet it had disappeared. “Oh my” said little Goldilocks. It must have been like the dinosaurs and become extinct.
While she was looking around the internet she found out that a bear market was not a good thing to have and that a bull market was much more desirable, so she gave up on looking for things that had to do with bears, her favorite animal, and decided to look for things that had more to do with bulls, although she had read about Ferdinand and had heard about bulls rampaging through china shops but she also knew that China was a huge country and had plenty of room for bulls to roam around, but I digress.
Then she happened across a site for a bank named Goldman-Sachs. It sounded quite promising on two counts: It started with the same term her name did, and it sounded as if it must have a lot of money as in sacks of gold. So she tried to get in touch with its CEO, Lloyd Blankfein (whose name Charles Dickens might have chosen for it contains elements associated with Lloyds of London and another concept such as ___________check.) However, she got nothing but a robo-receptionist who went on and on about all the different divisions and products they had available until poor Goldilocks gave up listening and now needed an Aleve.
Later she heard on the news that the federal government was investigating Goldman- Sachs for fraud and deception and that it had received a huge federal bailout because it was too big to fail. After reading about the Bear Stearns extinction, she did not understand how there could be anything larger than a dinosaur but clearly in some people’s minds there were such things. These things larger than dinosaurs were apparently immortal and began to act as if they were, so she decided that she would shop her investments elsewhere. She didn’t want a bank that thought it was God. It was clearly way too big.
Finally, she found a bank that was actually able to serve her long-term interests. It wasn’t the tiny little local bank that had very few offerings and not nearly a broad enough base of investments to withstand a serious recession because all of its income was based on very local loans. It wasn’t so large and so committed to instant profits for itself that it bet against its clients in order to expand its own sphere of influence internationally. It kept its eye on the long view and on serving its clients and its region well. It operated on a human scale and wished to serve generations of citizens, which is to say it was a regional bank with enough territory in its scope to satisfy a hungry bear and a herd of bulls as well as a little Goldilocks who had only a hundred dollars to invest. Little Goldilocks no longer had to worry about being gobbled up by bears or trampled by bulls because the people in her banking world knew and trusted each other. There was no more than two degrees of separation among the subscribers to the regional bank. They all knew someone who knew someone else among the whole banking constituency. It was neither too big to fail nor too small to succeed. It was just right.
The lesson Goldilocks learned from her experience is that the concept of “just right” is not just personal. It is universally human. The problem is that we as humans lose track of scale and either bite off more than we can chew or put ourselves on a diet that cannot possibly sustain us. We lack humility on the one hand and courage or common sense on the other. If only we asked ourselves, “Is this suitable or comfortable or fitting in the long run?” Instead we default to “more must be better” or “self-denial is a virtue” or “I want it now no matter what.” We end up behaving like the bulls and bears we use as symbols instead of the human beings we ultimately want to be and actually are.