Rules aimed at bank execs hitting ‘little people’ hard

Richard Eggers could be the poster boy for both sides of the banking business. He’s either a victim of greedy corporations or the victim of regulations strangling businesses and eliminating jobs, depending on your view.

Eggers, the Des Moines Register reports, lost his job as a Wells Fargo customer service representative this summer after it was discovered he put a cardboard cutout of a dime in a washing machine in Carlisle, Iowa on Feb. 2, 1963.

“It was a stupid stunt and I’m not real proud of it, but to fire somebody for something like this after seven good years of employment is a dirty trick when you come right down to it,” he told the newspaper.

It’s happening to a lot of people.

New rules to weed out executives and mid-level bank employees with questionable backgrounds, are ensnaring the little people instead.

The rules ban the employment of anyone convicted of a crime involving “dishonesty, breach of trust or money laundering,” the paper says. And they’re not wasting time making distinctions because the penalty is a $1 million a day fine.

The rules are hitting minorities hardest, according to one attorney.