Tank-A-Bank - 1 Year Later

We are fast approaching the one-year anniversary of the infamous Playboy cover story and I thought it might be fun to take a quick look at the year that has passed and see if we got anything right. For some reason, the article has been taken off the Playboy site, otherwise I'd link to it for you. It's probably for the best though, as most of your IT departments would have an internal shit hemorrhage if you tried to access Playboy.com from a work computer.

**EDIT** Thanks to WSO user Macro Arbitrage, here is a link to the actual article, and it shouldn't even upset your IT department (because it's Web Archive):
http://web.archive.org/web/20101104050226/http://www.playboy.com/articl…

I look at the whole #OccupyWallStreet thing and I see it as a sort of devolution from Tank-A-Bank. Where Tank-A-Bank was a fairly elegant solution to a national problem, #OccupyWallStreet is a less organized, more mob rule type of approach. Tank-A-Bank was a surgeon's scalpel compared to #OccupyWallStreet's chainsaw, if you will.

But I wonder if we here on WSO had anything to do with the emergence of #OccupyWallStreet. Let's face it: there was sufficient controversy here on WSO to attract national attention to Tank-A-Bank. Even with the changes Playboy made to the original plan (yes, the plan published in the magazine was a good deal different - and in my opinion, blunted - than the original plan) it got people thinking and talking about what could be done to rein in the Too Big To Fail banks. On balance, I think that's a good thing.

Then there was the attempt to enact the plan in France which pretty much fell on its face. I just don't think the French hate their bankers quite the way Americans seem to right now.

The banks themselves seem to be enacting part of the plan on their own as well. By raising fees on low-balance accounts, they're driving away the customers that actually cost them money to service. That's smart (though unpopular) business.

In other semi-related news, Shera Bechard (who graced the pages of our Playboy in her birthday suit) is now Hef's regular thing and is set to be Playmate of the Month next month.

As for me, I made a decision about the plan as well over the past year. I've decided to publish the original plan. The plan that was only up on the site for about 45 minutes in the middle of the night and managed to start this whole shitstorm. It'll be included uncut in its original format in my upcoming book, The Best of Braverman. Then you'll be able to decide for yourselves whether or not it would work.

And for those who missed it, here's a copy of our cover from last year. Enjoy: