Would you trust Wal-Mart with your money?

Would you trust Wal-Mart to do anything except to provide cheap, foreign made crap?

Now Wal-Mart is wanting to venture into banking. Next will be maternity wards and funeral homes. That way they could control us from beginning to the end.

Those who trust Wal-Mart will limit itself to a narrow range of banking activity misunderstand the nature of publicly-traded corporations, which by design are driven to grow perpetually. For a publicly-held company, there is no such thing as “big enough.”

Just as Wal-Mart constantly expands into new spheres of retail and services, so too it will seek to expand its reach in financial services. Given the current ease with which giant corporations convert monetary power into political power, why should we doubt it will succeed? Wal-Mart will not be content to continue leasing space to banks in its “supercenters” in exchange for a slice of the action when it can take the whole pie.

Wal-Mart naturally would use its bank to maximize shareholder profit, rather than serving the interests of communities in which it operates. And while many other banks are publicly-held companies, Wal-Mart’s size and scope again creates potential for harm that no other company is capable of inflicting.

A great place to keep up with the goings on at Wal-Mart is Wal-Mart Watch.