Using pillowcases for money safekeeping

JAKARTA (JP): Looking at pillowcases to keep your money in. Or gunnysacks, strongboxes, tiles that hide a hole in the floor, the mattress you lie on -- in short, anywhere safe and secure to put your hard-earned lolly in.

That, according to legend, used to be the only way in the days of yore to safeguard your money, although you wouldn't get any interest on it, of course.

Well, I don't think I will ever resort to pillowcases or the like, although I couldn't help feeling a tiny bit uneasy when the news broke about 16 banks going down the drain. How trustworthy are banks? Is your money secure in them? Would the list include my bank, or rather, the bank that houses my meager savings? (I don't own the thing).

Fortunately, it wasn't among them, but then came the news of some 26 other banks which could go the way of all flesh unless they pulled up their socks.

Again I heaved a sigh of relief at the absence of my bank on that unofficial -- but officially denounced -- list.

Was that the end of furrowed brows? No way, mate. Things like bank liquidations touch everybody, including yours truly who for some weeks now has been facing price increases, some of them quite hefty, in supermarkets.

Anyway, I gritted my teeth and started reading a little more seriously about everything concerning monetary matters, attention to which had hitherto been confined only to foreign exchange rates. Not that it made me any wiser.

What I usually get when reading such reports is a headache to end all headaches, and things didn't get any better when I came across an article titled Cultural Aspects and the Politics of Bank Liquidation. Eeeeek! Need I tell you that it might as well have been written in Swahili for all I was able to grasp of it?

But I did learn something, and not from the news publications or economic pundits, no sir! It was my hairdresser who suddenly popped a question the gist of it was something like this: if a bank owner dies, does that spell the end of the bank, too? "Whatever gave you that idea," I asked.

It appeared that he entrusted his money with the bank whose owner was rumored to have kicked the bucket. To withdraw or not to withdraw, that was the hairdresser's question.

It wasn't much, really, but some time afterwards I began to wonder whether he, the hairdresser, could be right thinking that a bank is only as healthy as its owner. True, I have never come across any news about Barclay's, Deutsche Bank, Chase Manhattan, whatever, going kaput because their owners or CEOs had gone to reside with the morning star. What if Manny was right?

After all, two owners whose banks had gone under created no end of a fuss and have even gone so far as suing poor Mr. Mar'ie Muhammad, who was only doing the job he was instructed to do.

Even then it struck me, a total ignoramus when it comes to financial matters, that there appears to exist a considerably wide perception among the public that owner and corporation are one, hence Manny's worry about the bank where he deposits his pay. In a way it was Manny who, with his question, made me realize that the man is the institution, something like l'etat c'est moi.

So if a bank owner sneezes, you can expect the bank to end up with a cold. I told Manny that he was safe, but still the worm of uncertainty kept gnawing at my conscience.

Things seem to be all right so far. That is, if the glowing reports about the position of the rupiah are correct. They may well be right, but I still have this gut feeling that they're not, IMF or no IMF, and that one had better wait and see how things develop. But even if clouds were to lift, I don't think I'd be able to dispel this rather large dollop of doubt; after all, this is the land of opaqueness.

Of course, I'm not about to move into the poorhouse, but you know what I did? Went around and sort of casually, discreetly, asked here and there about the owner or at least the CEO of my bank. It appears that he is a model of integrity, dependability, incorruptibility -- in short, he possesses all the qualities you'd expect of a bank owner.

However, lately I've been scanning obituaries first before reading other articles in the news, because the man will never see 70 again. Maybe pillowcases are worth considering, after all.

-- Jak Jaunt