In Episode 1, Joe left Wells Fargo's loss mitigation department disgusted by what he'd seen — a government-banking partnership designed to make the mortgage crisis disappear rather than solve it. He thought the problem was isolated. He thought it was just Wells Fargo.
Then he took a job at Bank of America.
The Special Assets Group occupied floors 5 through 8 of a pristine downtown tower. Joe was given an officer title, a cubicle by the window overlooking the city streets below. He was told he'd be doing real banking work — financial analysis, credit assessments, risk reports. He was 100% in.
Then he submitted his first reports. The next morning, every single one came back rejected.
What the manager's note said — and what Joe was actually being asked to do to small business owners across the country — was the moment everything changed.
Bank of America had acquired hundreds of smaller regional banks over the years, inheriting all of their commercial loan customers in the process. Those customers had never chosen Bank of America. They'd been working with local community banks for years. And now, through no decision of their own, they found themselves dealing with a corporation that had no loyalty to them and a financial incentive to squeeze as much as possible on the way out.
Joe watched the bank raise interest rates, charge arbitrary fees, and convert credit lines into term loans that businesses didn't want on terms they couldn't afford. He watched relationship managers tell small business owners — in the middle of the worst economic environment in a generation — that the bank was raising their rate and charging them 3% on top of it.
And then there was the offset. If a business didn't respond within 30 days, the bank would simply take the money out of their checking account and apply it to the loan balance. Money those businesses had earned. Money they were counting on to make payroll.
What made it worse was how many people inside the building saw nothing wrong with any of it.
This episode is the continuation of Joe's personal story — the experience that convinced him the corporate banking world was not a broken institution that needed reform. It was working exactly as designed. And it was time to get out.
───
In this episode:
• The real purpose of Bank of America's Special Assets Group
• Why the risk assessments Joe was hired to perform were completely irrelevant to the actual decisions being made
• How the bank profited by targeting small businesses that never chose to be its customers
• The "offset" practice — and what it reveals about the culture inside big banking
───
New episodes every week. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube or wherever you listen.
📩 Join the Phoenician League newsletter below for weekly macro investing analysis, real asset research, and the kind of thinking you won't find in the mainstream financial press.