4.30.2009

Americans: Has your bank robbed YOU?

UPDATE MAY 1, 2009 Senate isn't helping
UPDATE MAY 3, 2009  Top Fat Cats
UPDATE MAY 3, 2009 Senate FAILS PUBLIC on bankruptcy judge options
UPDATE MAY 6, 2009 Let CITI workers eat their own dogfood

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That a financial crisis grips America and the world presently seems to be the consensus view. More importantly is how it effects each and every one of us - American or not.  Recent bank failures and bailouts were forced on the public by both Democrats and Republicans alike - taking money from the public to sustain failed banks.  The monetary crisis became the basis for occasional cries from the corporate-owned media for a "global" solution required NOW to thwart DISASTER - just like the bailout. 

 I ask the reader to consider the following every time the phone rings from a mortgage company looking for payment, every time they receive notice of investment losses, every time their government asks for what little they have left, and every time they are told that a "global solution" is the answer.  I ask the reader:  Has your BANK robbed YOU?   (That is...with the help of YOUR government.)

That the economies of the world are interdependent is not new. During the American Civil War cotton was such a (CLICK HERE) commodity as illustrated by the following passage from the linked site:

     "In 1858 Senator James Henry Hammond of South Carolina replied to Senator William H. Seward of New York:

        "Without the firing of a gun, without drawing a sword, should they [Northerners] make war upon us [Southerners], we could bring the whole world to our feet. What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years? . . England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her. No, you dare not make war on cotton! No power on earth dares make war upon it. Cotton is King."

Hammond, like most white Southerners, believed that cotton ruled not just in the South but in the United States and the world. Many economists agreed. In 1855, David Christy entitled his influential hook Cotton Is King. Cotton indeed drove the economy of the South, affected its social structure, and, during the Civil War, dominated international relations of the Confederacy through "cotton diplomacy."

    Was Hammond correct?  It turns out other sources of cotton took over.  The point I emphasize is that international trade interdependence is not new.  I make that point to illustrate that even for a crisis as great as the American "Civil" War,  fought on American soil, the surrender of national sovereignty was unnecessary.  Although the greenback provided for the obscene expenses required to finance the bloodbath; the concomitant changes in monetary and tax policy required for implementation of "greenbacks" arguably would have negative consequences for Americans in the long run.  I mention these historical debates to provide an alternative perspective when a shill from the corporate-owned media claims a "global currency" will solve our money problems.   Who cares?  Why should you?  That the U.S. Federal government's is derelict in its duty as custodian of public treasure is not a secret.  But to what extent are they complicit in assuring the public got the bad deal while the banks escaped with the loot? 

A friend recently expressed consternation when she couldn't make her mortgage payment (her first time ever) as slow-paying customers who owed her money didn't have the funds to pay her.  Their slow payment was, they said, based on the economic slowdown.  Fair enough.  Her mortgage company is INDYMAC.  Consider the following from (CLICK HERE) this article:

"All that was a memory on Tuesday, however, as Rubin and about 200 other anxious, embittered and sometimes angry customers swarmed an IndyMac bank branch in the San Fernando Valley, creating a Depression Era-like scene as they demanded their money just four days after the failing bank was seized by federal regulators."

Could this be the same bank?  She received recurring calls from debt collectors with accents implying that the collection agents tasked with hounding her were from India.  The calls were, and may still be, relentless. How is it, she asked me, that this bank, which went belly-up recently and was bailed out by the feds (her, you, and me)  was still around to collect on debt?  Consider THIS  article excerpt which gives numbers:

"The FDIC estimated that its takeover of IndyMac would cost between $4 billion and $8 billion."

On what ground does said bank stand when lecturing the very public they ran to when they ran their (CLICK FOR NAME CHANGE)  institution into the ground?  How did she benefit from the bailout?  What concessions did her public representatives make to help her ease the pain of making mortgage payments during these troubled times?  The question arises:  Has your bank robbed YOU?  


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UPDATE MAY 3, 2009

5 comments:

  1. they do it every five minutes. every time I use my ATM card, the miserable sacks of shit charge me an exhorbitant amount of money. My next step is to withdraw all of it, and go with paying bills with money orders, it's LESS EXPENSIVE.

    fuck the banks. truly they are the biggest parasites out there! They all need to be gone!

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  2. Good point Anonymous - the ATM fees are kinda' funny, but not really - when they "ask" if you approve the fee - before giving the loot, your loot. I know how much money they'll dispense, my money, if I answer 'no' to their "cut" - so the question is a formality in the process of yet another leech sucking our blood.

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  3. actually you don't get the warning in the case of my bank rooking me for even a cash back transaction from a store I shop in, such as COSTCO. there was once a time when that never happened, but not I get cornholed almost at every use of the card. other banks I hear do the same things now, so switching banks is more or less a 'moot point' if it's intended to prevent the service charge. I agree that if I see it on the ATM screen that's okay, but if I find out about it after the fact in my bank statment, that's NOT OKAY. the bank is T.C.F. Bank in Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio and Illinois, by the way. Once a good bank, they have gone very very bad, hey...I can see it now, a television commercial; "Banks Gone Bad: buy the episodes for 9.95 plus shipping and handling TODAY!!!" (don't forget the surcharge if you use T.C.F. Bank!

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  4. We're from the government and we're here to help.

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  5. "Pay your bills for FREE using our bank's..." - my favorite.

    I wonder...during a bank robbery, does the bank manager/president sit terrified in his office praying that money is all the armed man is there for?

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