The time has come for me to bail out.

[Steve_A]

Hi Everybody,

I had to do it. My confidence in the private banking system finally came to an end when a simple transaction with my bank Unibanco in Brazil became a fiasco.

I closed the account and will open a public bank account today or perhaps tomorrow.

How did I arrive at my decision?

Well as we know, it's Europe and the US which is taking the brunt of the economic crisis and the secondary markets, although not affected imediately, will suffer as the crisis travels down the line, less exports, less demand, shrinking economy, more unemployment, more defaulting on debt and so forth.

What I have learnt from watching the front lines is that the UK is basically nationalizing the banking system and the US taxpayer is subsidizing certain financial institutions linked more closely to the government.

Here in Brazil there are some public banks (state owned), like the Caixa Economica Federal or Banco do Brasil (where I'll be opening my new account). These banks will be the last ones to fail as they have government backing. If these banks fail, the government fails.

Another thing is that the employees of Unibanco are totally unaware of the global financial crisis and frankly, that disturbs me. I my opinion it shows lack of interest in their business. If they can't be interested about the bank, why should we?

It appears the bank is trying to make a 'money grab', reducing costs too much, creating a sort of McDonalds' banking system, transforming the air inside the bank from what was once powerful, confident and secure to one of nervousness and a certain urgency for the customer to do their business and get out. (That was just the feeling I got). It felt like impending doom was on the way and thay had to rake it in as much as they could whilst they still had the chance.

Unibanco still has ties with AIG which also leaves me wondering about its' future. The insurance side of Unibancos' operations are linked with AIG. If AIG goes than more than half the banks of the world will go under as insurance takes up a high percentage of revenue for a bank.

Finally, the employees of the bank can do no wrong. Even after a catastrophic almost two weeks to do something that should have taken one day, the bank insists in charging for the un-service that they un-provided.

It's sad. I had my account in Unibanco for over ten years, but times they are a-changing.... and I'm outa there!

Best regards,

Steve