Bad Buck News

Feel free to hum along while reading about fathers and bank larcenies — particularly if you happen to know the tune to Chumbawamba's "Daddy Was a Bankrobber" ditty.

Maybe it's the times, but a quick click through the news makes it seem that dads and bank larcenies are almost as much a match as fathers and children. The biggest dollars are attached to the tale of the Stanfords. [Earlier: Workplace Surprises] Father "It's a Witch Hunt" James happily took money from son Allen "Sticky Wicket" Stanford, leaving the younger enough of the investments to begin building his own private bank, which (blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, these things happen) eventually led to his being on the hook for billions of bucks he sorta can't seem to find to give back to investors.

Things aren't much better if a father doesn't share in his son's search for some scratch. That at least is the lesson (hopefully) learned with the report from Santa Ana, Calif., where a 50-year-old son is in custody after robbing two banks, which he only did because his dad wouldn't spare him some change.

Even lessons in doing the right thing seem to end up in stories of bank robberies. There's the college student who ratted out dad to the FBI after seeing the video of a local bank robbery. And, in perhaps the saddest of all the stories, there is the father of four, church deacon and successful (?) realtor, who tried knocking over Greenville (S.C.) First and ending up in police custody, charged with robbery and kidnapping. He could be looking through bars for perhaps the next 30 years at kids and eventually even grandkids.

It's probably just another sad sign of difficult times when fathers and finances come together in such sad ways.