BANKS TRIM WORK FORCES, SERVICES, CUSTOMER CHOICE.

Byline: Jeremy Bagott

HEEEE-AAAAW! The Wells Fargo wagon is a-comin'!

For the sake of anyone on another planet during December, I review: That banking institution with the familiar stagecoach logotype - the one that embodies the true spirit of the rugged frontier and the glory that was, is and would forever be the West, etc. - hitched up its corporate buckboard and clodhoppered through California four days before Christmas, announcing it was shedding 10,800 jobs - 3,600 more than it quietly had projected when it was champing at the bit to buy and digest its rival, L.A.-based First Interstate Bancorp.

Foreshadowing Wells Fargo's decision to make road apples out of nearly 11,000 of its employees was an announcement a week earlier by the state's other beloved megabank, Bank of America, unveiling its plan to close 120 state branches and expunge 3,700 employees, or 4 percent of its work force. The bank's artsy, cinematic commercials celebrating the state's hip, eclectic denizens set to the twangy B of A theme song is surely little inspiration to its graduating class of newly jobless.

Happy New Year, California.

But don't be too alarmed. If it's been said once, it's been said a thousand times: THIS IS ONLY A TREND. FOR THE NEXT FEW YEARS OF MERGERS, CALIFORNIANS WILL GREATLY LOSE THEIR POWER TO CHOOSE. BUT THIS IS ONLY TEMPORARY AND PART OF THE NATURAL ECONOMIC CYCLE. DO NOT - REPEAT, DO NOT - BE ALARMED.

Even now, the laws of supply and demand are slowly kicking in. The faint jingling sound you now hear is the sound of thousands of entrepreneurial types throughout the state counting their spare change and starting banks out of home offices.

The only problem with some of these small, informal institutions is the high interest rates on loans and the ugly late-payment fees they tend to exact, like popped collar buttons and broken kneecaps (and they're not FDIC-insured). But some take bets for sporting events by phone, so they're not all bad.

My wife and I have even been thinking of starting a little bank boutique of our own. It won't be easy navigating the maze of state and federal banking regulations and coming up with the requisite political contributions to key committee members in Washington and Sacramento.

But the satisfaction we'll derive will be incredible.

Of course, by the time it comes about, homo sapiens will have mutated into some unrecognizable life form, but our progeny somewhere up the evolutionary ladder will surely benefit.

And what's America's central bank, the Federal Reserve, doing to check this ever-increasing market concentration by the state's twin banking sasquatches?

In mid-December, the Fed gave banks by a unanimous vote permission to underwrite stocks and bonds with a whopping 25 percent of what is (or was) essentially our money. So, as it becomes more difficult to get at our money in the face of mounting branch closures and employee expulsions, banks now, theoretically, have greater incentive to make it that much more costly to access.

And don't look to the federal government for help as we California consumers lose our option to choose.

The Federal Trade Commission has its hands full moderating a proposed merger between two leading makers of a product vital to the U.S. economy - class rings (as in college class rings). The Department of Commerce has all it can handle organizing trade junkets for officials and captains of industry to the Italian Riviera. The Department of Defense is actually bankrolling mergers between aerospace titans that are projected by many to cost taxpayers untold billions in future waste - a process overseen by former defense industry insiders, who, after their appointed stints at the Pentagon, will soon again be defense industry insiders.

And, in a development possibly too weird for fiction, the post-Waco Justice Department is busy advising Peru on how peacefully to end a hostage standoff.

So much for the feds.

Of course, we as consumers can just say no to megabanks and their toadies in government who turn a blind eye to their monopolizing forays. Bills can be paid by grocery store money order and there are still a few unmerged small banks, community thrifts and credit unions. But that misses the point.

Californians have grown tired of unchecked mergers among healthy companies and the market concentration that ensues.

But, then again, who wants to be stuck in the benighted past, when many banks once competed in California on the basis of competitive fees, easy access to branches and friendly service by real human beings?