Last Sunday the News and Observer reported that after receiving $4.9 billion from Uncle Sam to ‘loosen credit’ SunTrust Bank finds itself in the unfortunate position of ‘calling notes’ on customers here in the Triangle.

I read the article before church. Driving home after church I passed a SunTrust sign and half expected to see it covered with angry graffiti. It’s tough being a banker today: People haven’t talked this way about bankers – or corporations in general – since the Great Depression. Worse (for the CEOs) unlike the 1930s, today we’re living in a kind of democracy where being villainized can have political repercussions that are deadly – a corporation wearing a black hat today doesn’t have a PR problem it has a political problem. It’s a sitting duck to be blasted by any politician needing a popularity boost – being vilified can lead to the political equivalent of rape and it can be pretty painful: Like GM the corporation may find Barney Frank looking over its shoulder telling it how to run its business.

Worse, corporations haven’t figured out there’s a big debate going on and they’re not part of it – they seem to think PR is about selling products and politics is lobbying but they’re about to learn politics means no legislator wants to be friends with a villain – instead he wants to lynch the villain to make the people who elect him happy.

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