Dear Timothy J. Sloan:

Hey Tim—can I call you Tim?—howzit goin’? OK, I know the answer to that one: Being CEO of Wells Fargo these days is no picnic. After being fined $185 million by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau two years ago for opening millions of unauthorized deposit and credit card accounts for your customers, you must have thought there was nowhere to go but up, right? But then there was that unpleasantness last year when the CFPB found out that you charged nearly half a million of your auto-loan customers for car insurance they didn’t ask for, which sent tens of thousands of borrowers into default, with their cars repossessed on top of it. That one cost a cool $1 billion fine from CFPB (ouch!). Who knows how much it’s going to cost when they fine you for “accidentally” foreclosing on 400 of your customers? If you add up just your top 10 fines since 2000, they total $12,585,199,147. Dude, I’m no banker, but that’s a lot of moola! 

Tim, I’m here to help you with this sorry PR situation. I’d like to note from the outset that I’m offering this advice for free, although further consultation will run you, say, 1 percent of the $17.4 million you took home last year. (Congratulations on that 36 percent raise, by the way. Woo hoo!) 

As the Huffington Post uncharitably (if accurately) noted, you’re now on your, what, third rebranding attempt? The problem, HuffPo pointed out, is that every time you “renew” or “refresh,” there’s some darn new scandal, so you have to reboot all over again. There’s only so many times you can run a full-page apology in The New York Times before people start to doubt your sincerity. 

Here comes my advice. You already know the First Rule of Holes, right? When in one, stop digging. But not many people know the Second Rule of Holes: Don’t dig a new one. Especially if that hole is in the incomparable Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which the (please note, catastrophically unpopular) President Trump is doing his best to lease out to oil and gas drilling. Already, a bunch of other less-scandal-plagued banks—HSBC, BNP Paribas, Societe Generale, and others—have pledged not to finance the destruction of America’s last, greatest wilderness.  

Unbelievably, Wells Fargo has yet to join this fine effort. Tim, Tim, Tim. Do you really want your bank forever linked to pictures of sad polar bear cubs looking at oil spills? Baby caribou trying to maneuver around drilling rigs? Since you’ve been a little slow on the uptake in other matters, Tim, I guess I need to be explicit here: No. You. Do. Not. 

You—and others!—can sign up right here to do the right thing and renounce funding of Arctic drilling. Trust me, Tim, it will make you feel—renewed. 

Your humble consultant,
Paul Rauber