Why Joe the Cataloger Should Oppose the Bank Bailout
Can you believe it? JPMorgan Chase, one of the richest financial institutions in this country, is nestling up to the great public sugar teat.
And it’s not alone. Numerous banks will benefit from the bailout now said to be nearing $1 trillion (or was that a separate bailout?)
I have one question: What’s in it for Joe the Cataloger?
You know Joe: He runs a mediums-size catalog house, and he tries to do the right thing.
He would never saturate mailboxes with easy credit offers, then abuse the people who have trouble paying—with variable interest, hidden fees and all the other slimy things that are now being documented. He would never cut consumers off based on where they live, work and shop (a glorified form of redlining reported in the New York Times).
But he is lumped together with banks in general in the so-called direct marketing industry. That is, he belongs to the same association as several banks—the DMA.
Just what does Joe get out of this arrangement?
Not much. The banks get breaks on postage while Joe is priced almost out of existence.
The banks routinely slam him with killer credit transaction fees, yet they expect his support on regulatory issues. But who created many of these problems?
Joe, who would never hand his customers’ names to crooked affiliates, has to worry that provisions from Gramm-Leach-Bliley will spill over into his domain.
Joe, who mails a mere fraction of the volume sent by the banks and uses recycled paper, is the one being pursued by ForestEthics.
Yet Joe, who faces rising paper costs and poor holiday sales, can expect little help from the banks when he is finally driven into Chapter 11.
That’s why Joe should oppose the bank bailout, and so should all of us.
As H.L. Mencken wrote in 1922 about the farmer: “When the going is good for him he robs the rest of us up to the extreme limit of our endurance; when the going is bad he comes bawling for help out of the public till.”
It’s the same with some of these banks.
November 4th, 2008 at 10:17 am
Ray, your thoughts set the table perfectly for the importance of the American Catalog Mailers Association (ACMA). As a big tent association of direct marketers, the DMA is ill-suited to represent the catalog industry on postal and regulatory issues. ACMA has over seventy members and needs growing cataloger support. For more information on ACMA’s effective work on the cataloger’s behalf, go to www.catalogmailers.org. Regards, Ralph