Prep reading for today’s hearings on Wells Fargo fiasco in Senate Banking committee

Wells Fargo Concord stagecoach. April 2012 photo by James Ulvog.
Wells Fargo Concord stagecoach. April 2012 photo by James Ulvog.

Before you tune in to the headlines generated by Senators striving for the best one-liner in hearings which will appear in the evening news, check out these background articles.

So far looks like there is stiff competition in the race for most outraged Senator. At the moment, Senator Warren is in the lead.

9/16 – CNN Money – Wells Fargo drumbeat grows louder. House launches investigation – The House Financial Service Committee will start hearings late in September. The Wells CEO has been called to testify.

The rhetorical trap already set by the minority chair of the Senate Banking Committee is that if senior management did not know this was going on then the bank is too big to manage. The choice, as she infers: senior management is complicit or the bank ought to be broken up.

Of course the smart aleck in the crowd would ask why the Senator makes that an either/or issue when the power of “and” might better apply.

9/15 – Going Concern – Will KPMG Join Wells Fargo in its Walk of Shame? – Good primer on fiasco. Pondering on how something going wrong with 5000 people getting fired and over 2 million accounts being opened. Seems to the author if nothing else there would have been a flood of irritated calls to the call centers.

9/19 – Francine McKenna – Senators to put Wells Fargo CEO Stumpf on the spot – Preview of the Senate hearings on following day.

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