Chase National Bank is under fire these days for attempting to play the part of morality police. They have been systematically closing the personal accounts of adult entertainment industry performers, less than affectionately referred to by their typical job title as ‘porn stars’, and they have been citing various reasons for doing so. Not only are they being targeted, but their spouses are also being targeted for being associated with them, as in the case of Joshua Lehman, husband of Teagan Presley, who is herself an adult film performer.
Chase gave him a multi-level run around as to why he and his wife were being closed upon. They began by saying it was the nature of their business. Next, the bank told him it was because his wife was an ‘infamous porn star’. Lastly, they offered that it was because the couple had done business with a former felon. Essentially, the bank and its officers want to deny business to these folks because they’re involved in ‘icky business’.
Chase forgets, in this instance, that they are a business, and as such, are supposed to be beholden to the abominable ethos that every other business in America is: preserve the bottom line for the shareholders and maximize profits, no matter how. How does a financial institution justify layoffs in order to protect its ledgers, and then simultaneously turn around and deny deposits and/or banking services to private customers based upon a moral objection to their completely legal career venue?
JPMorgan Chase is planning an overall headcount reduction of 5,000 workers for the 2014 calendar. Would anybody care to tell me how removing the accounts of adult entertainment industry employees is going to help add into the savings accrued from those layoffs? Oh, that’s right, it won’t!
The unfortunate thing in all of this is the fact that there is no precise discriminatory protection precedent set prior to all of this nonsense. Being a nongovernment entity, Chase can deny services to anybody they so chose under the law, as can just about anybody if there isn’t a clear-cut case of harm being rendered as a result of the denial. But it won’t be long until these performers can’t cash their checks or deposit them in order to make their bill payments on time, especially if the historically conservative-minded financial institutions of this country decide that this is a fine vehicle by which to destroy their entire working environment.
When you make a person’s career unprofitable, you render them unable to continue doing business. I wonder how many politicians would enjoy having Chase or Bank of America deny them their accounts or shut them down, or deny them and their staff loans based upon the fact that in their jobs, they routinely fuck people. They just don’t do it in front of a camera, and usually the risk of infection is minimal, unless the disease is total disenfranchisement.
As for telling Mr. Lehman and his wife that they could no longer have an account because they’ve worked (purportedly) with a felon in the past, I ask you this: go on Wikipedia and look up JPMorgan Chase. Give their page a read-through. Now, I’m not usually one for trusting Wikipedia to have all of the answers, but the profundity of civil and criminal proceedings against this banking institution over just the course of the last fifteen years has been staggering to behold. If Mr. Lehman were to be inclined to get in touch with the bank again, I would urge him to inform them that they were correct, he had indeed involved himself in business with a felon- the bank.
It is not the role of a bank to tell people how they may earn their money insofar as it is legally obtained through labors, services or sales of goods in a lawful fashion. And guess what, Chase? Adult film performers are engaged in legal labors, whether you think they’re morally acceptable or not. That isn’t your call to make. Your job is supposed to be to maximize the profits for yourselves and your shareholders, and nothing else. As much as I hate that corporate ethos and want to see it scrubbed from the face of the planet, I believe that for the time being, people need to start throwing it right back in the faces of greedy, self-righteous fuckers like those in charge of JPMorgan Chase.
That’s all for now.
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