Barney's investment portfolio

As referenced earlier, I was elected to the Vestry at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church (also referred to as Barney’s). To my regret, I find myself in a conflict with my fellow vestry members. Barney’s is not a wealthy parish. It is, however, fiscally stable. We have some investments, a money market account, certificates of deposit, and some stocks. Specifically, we have stocks in an auto parts company and in Bank of … well, rather than name the entity in which we have stock let me say that we have shares in a large American bank, a veritable banking gorilla. The bank stocks came as a gift from a now deceased communicant. Holding onto the bank stock is the crux of the troubled waters that now characterize our happy little Vestry. I want to dump the bank stock. Even though we profit from the, I want to dispose of the stock because this bank is a wicked, greedy and despicable company, bordering on a criminal enterprise. This bank obtained a get-out-of-jail card from the morons at the US Department of Justice by paying almost $26 billion for its criminal activity in shady mortgage lending. This bank was scamming retailers with fixed swipe fees and got a second reprieve from jail with a $6 billion settlement of a class action suit. Now, this bank is in the middle of the LIBOR scandal that brought down the head of Barclays and will result in years of litigation and billions in fines and penalties and yet to be experienced pain on the part of interest paying consumers. The bottom-line is that this bank is as bad a corporate citizen as a drug cartel or an extortion ring. Holding stock in this bank is, to me, sharing in the company’s dastardly deeds. Ironically, this bank was founded by an Italian immigrant with the expressed aim of assisting the community. The company gave Italian immigrants employment and access to capital to build lives in their adopted home when no one else would consider investing in the immigrant community. Now, this bank is a villain that squeezes middle class home purchasers with rate rigging and sinister sleight of hand to build its own profits. The company would steal the coins off a dead man’s eyes, to use an expression taught to me by my grandmother. The controversy at Barney’s will solve itself and I have to tell myself not to get too excited by the issue. Instead of pushing too hard, every month at our meeting, I remind my fellow vestry members that we are in bed with banksters. As almost daily reports of new and shocking crimes committed by this bank appear in the media, my monthly reminders are beginning to have an impact. Good-hearted people do not want to be associated with marauding pirates. Barney’s Vestry will eventually dump these bums. Good judgment will one day prevail. And, when it does, we will return to our bucolic repose as if these banking vermin had never disturbed it. As my Iraqi friends would say, “enshalla.”