Banks and your money: bailouts from the taxpayer while profiteering from the poor

Overdraft fees and the latest in let them eat cake.  Does anyone besides me see the irony in banks lobbying so hard to keep overdraft fees?  Can anyone think of any large overdrafts lately?  Not the kind measured in pennies and caused by bouncing a check at the grocer or gas station, but the kind measured in trillions and caused by greed and arrogance.

After taking their bonuses off the top, like good little MBAs, the banks are busy right now spending money on lobbyists at the highest rate in history. No amount of our tax money is being spared in the effort to bribe our congressman into voting against the national interests in favor of the banks. Should banks be more regulated? – heck no. Should risky investment strategies continue to be backed by government guarantees as if they were pennies in a piggy bank? – of course. How about a tax on excess bonuses paid with taxpayer money? – socialist! Should banks that were “too big to fail” be broken up as part of a taxpayer bailout – communist plot!

But it does not stop there – having already lost any sense of shame, the bankers are now lobbying to keep their piratical overdraft fees in place. I mean – are you kidding? Banks have received bailouts worth more than centuries of their old fashioned profits. They overspent their accounts by an average of 32 to 1. All of this and yet they have the hubris to whine when congress tries to prevent them from forcing individual taxpayers into bankruptcy by charging wildly inflated fees for overdrafts. Mere humility would suffice for banks to realize how brief and small these public overdrafts appear next to the bank failures. AIG for example, received a bailout equal to 14 times the amount of profit its previous chairman had managed to earn from 1968 to 2005. Banks lost the equivalent of centuries and centuries of their total capitalist profit and the taxpayers made up for it, in one huge welfare check for the rich. Yet, despite this rather substantial overdraft, they paid no penalties – none, what so ever.

VIKING CAPITOLISM – from investors to looters - how wall street raiders destroyed American Industry and how corporations are finishing off the American economy today with a leveraged buyout of congress and one last rape of a looted economy.

The rich are getting richer. This may be old news, but the story has changed over the last few decades and is reaching a climax here and now.  The rich are getting richer, but not through investing their own money, creating jobs and earning a profit. Not even through the slow and inexorable accumulation of tax benefits which has fueled most of the last quarter century’s gap between us and the wealthy. No, these methods have become old and tiresome. The corporate elite have always seen to it that they reap their share of profit. But not only have their taken more and more than ever before, but now they have figured out a way to make profit out of failure. Before, they were willing to reap the slow steady benefit of special tax breaks and government contracts. That was in a slower, more studied world where the long term was at least taken into effect. The rich lived off the economy but they did not take too much for fear of killing the golden goose.

Well, that was yesterday - today its Foie Gras is on the champagne buffet. Modern financial types have become the ultimate short termers, nothing matters but the quarterly profit – hell, the weekly quota. Starting way back in the 1980s, the financial class in America became addicted to short term profit. Exxon sold its headquarter building and rented it back from Japan. Boeing and GM turned over all their industrial power to China in exchange for some cheap parts to improve the end of the year bonus for a few dozen billionaires.

Capitalism was supposed to be based on investing your money in a company, buying equipment and hiring employees to produce a product and make a steady profit over time. Starting in the 80s American finance moved to a different model – modeled closely on the Viking raiders who looted the monasteries of the middle ages. The new capitalism worked something like this. You created some fake bonds with no backing whatsoever except the potential for loot. You sold those bonds. Now you used someone else’s money to buy a thriving company. Instead of investing in equipment – you pawned it off to pay back the money you borrowed. Instead of hiring employees, you fired them to reduce cost and make the company look better for a short term sale. Soon the useful parts of the company were sold off bit by bit to fill the pockets of the corporate raiders.  As to producing something - what a laugh, that is a job for 9 year old chinese, not American workers. 

MOVE YOUR MONEY - punish big banks for their abuse and help make small banks safer

*** note - the links on this post will transfer you away from VFSE - if you right click and open in a new window you can view the links and stay here with me at the same time - im sure there is some way to automate that, but I am clueless at this time


MOVE YOUR MONEY

The one action we have left to us in this time of the largest transfer of wealth to the wealthy in history is the ability to control the money left to you after paying taxes. Our taxes go largely to corporate welfare or to support the military industrial complex, but we still get to handle the money in our own checking accounts – so far.

We have set helplessly by as the corporations cashed in their best investment ever – the congress. Banks created a corrupt system and abused it. When the system began to fail, they yanked their money out of the system as fast as lightning. They demanded that the US taxpayer put his money on the table while the dice were rolling. Wall Street only plays its chips after the wheel stops and the winner called. We socialize the risk and privatize the profit. Hell, that is almost a cliché today and still nothing is done about it. Why – because your congressmen is bought: lock, stock and barrel. No matter how much you deny it the congress serves corporations first, second and last.

I can easily argue that we have no power left to us and nothing will change anything. But having been robbed of some much by a corrupt system, I will be damned if I give up hope. Hope from the hopeless is probably the single biggest affront to fascism – economic or otherwise.

So, we determine to retain hope, now -what do we do with it. This is one thing. Take your money, that which the government has left you and move it. Take it out of the giant – too big to fail – hand in the puppet – lobby wielding – banks. By the strictest definition this would be a list of 6: JP Morgan/Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo and the two phony banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. These are the banks that benefited from trillions of dollars in taxpayer bailout then cut loans to the people by over 100 billion, while increasing their spending on lobbying congress and of course their own bonuses.

Open up an account in a smaller local bank and support them, while the government has been bailing out the giant banks it has been closing hundreds of smaller banks that tried to work with the system and for the most part did what banks are supposed to do – help people prosper. If the bought and sold congress will not aid the small banks it is up to we the people to do so. If you want information on local banks there is an excellent website set up by the people who started the Huffington Post MOVE YOUR MONEY campaign. Here is a link to the bank site : http://moveyourmoney.info/find-a-bank

Following are 7 easy steps to make the transfer. I also got this information from the Huffington Post.

1. Open your new account.

In most cases, you should be able open a checking account with an initial deposit of between $25 and $100. At a credit union, you’ll also become a member and co-owner at the same time.

2. Order your new debit/ATM card and checks.

These typically arrive within 1 to 2 weeks. You may also want to apply for a credit card from your new local institution.

3. If you use direct deposit, ask your employer to reroute your paycheck to your new account.

When you open your new account, ask the bank or credit union for a direct deposit authorization form that includes your new account information. Give this form to your employer and anyone else who makes direct deposits to your account. It may take one or more pay cycles for the change to be made, so keep your old checking account open and watch for the switch.

4. Contact companies that direct-debit your account.

Using your last bank statement, make a list of any businesses that you’ve authorized to directly debit your account. Ask your new bank or credit union for an automatic payments authorization form that includes your new account information. Send this to the businesses on your list.

5. Set up online bill paying for your new account.

If you like to pay bills online, set up bill payment information for your new account. Meanwhile, stop any automatic recurring payments you have established through your old account.

6. Close your old account.

Once you have started receiving direct deposits into your new account and are sure that there are no outstanding checks or automatic debits that need to clear, close your old account. Warning: do not just withdraw the last dollar and assume the account will fade away on its own. Your old big bank may start charging you fees for having an empty or inactive checking account. Instead, follow the bank’s procedure for closing out the account.

7. Enjoy your new local banking relationship!


Think about the level of control big money has in our lives. Do we intend to stand idly by? Now review those 7 steps. Do you see anywhere on that list – lose your job? lose all you possess? be arrested? be tortured? put your and your family’s lives at risk? No, these things are not required. Although millions of people HAVE done this and more, struggling and usually failing, to reach the freedoms we have enjoyed in this country. Is it so much to ask?  Can we not at least try?

Sure, your money may not be billions, but it is an action. We have to do something or we continue to signal the corporations and their pet congressmen that we will stand by for anything. We have become as inert and helpless as any peasant ever trod on by an arrogant lord. It is time to show them we can still act and we will act. This action in isolation is a tiny prick. But perhaps, if we act in mass, we can prod the congress into listening to us. At the very least we will have made big banks smaller and small banks more secure. Take the time to act. Act now and spread the word. We will retain hope even in the face of hopelessness.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Icqrx0OimSs&feature=player_embedded

The phantom stock market recovery - all that glitters is not gold

The2009/2010 stock market recovery – addiction to flashy ideas and shiny profits and how the Wall Street tycoons are getting ready to drive us over the cliff all over again.


The Dow Jones Index is over 10,000 again. Everyone is hailing the return of the stock market. Profits are up on Wall Street, bonuses are rewarding them one and all. The government points to it as signs of a strong economy, and the media tells us “all is well, go forth and shop”.

Well, pardon me but I think a piece of sky just fell in my lap. I will not make this post long and complicated because I want people to try and understand the danger we are in. I will not pepper it with my heartfelt believe that the men and women who run our nation’s finances are a bunch of uneducated, inbred idiots with talent no greater than the average car salesman. In fact, I would say that is an insult to car salesmen – these people are carnies. Whoops – seems I did slip just a little diatribe in – had to for medical reasons.

Ok, so straight to the point. When the US taxpayer, (that would be you and I, since 72% of corporations pay zero taxes), bailed out Goldman Sax and the rest of the financial “industry” we placed no meaningful conditions on the funds. We all have seen how much of the money was used to keep their absurd bonuses in place and then to fund the largest lobbying year in history. Let us take that as given. You can ignore that obscenity for now. Nor did we place any restrictions on their conduct, nor reduce their size so they could afford to fail on their own next time. (Remember this happens about every 10 years, derivatives in 2009, savings and loans in the 80s, international loans in the 60s – we used to send the marines in like when we occupied Haiti for Citicorp, but now we simply bail the banks out 100 pennies to the dollar with extra thrown in for bonuses.) No let all these giant omissions lay and assume the position for the next bailout – because it is coming and it will be caused by the very same derivatives that created the first one.

Yes, exactly, the same derivatives- note, bond and bundled nonsense. For among the numerous things we did not do is to require those firms to write off the bad debts and phony investments. We simply handed them enough money to cover all their investments and then some. They were not required to liquidate any of the fake wealth they had on their books – they simple wrote it down to a penny here a dollar there. Same thing you say, writing down the poison to pennies when it was once labeled in the thousands would seem to be the same thing. Perhaps it would, if we were a thoughtful people and they were honest managers. Neither is true of course. The truth is we are as careless as crows, blinded by the gaudiest, shiniest, piece of trash in the yard and fighting each other for the chance to pick it up – and as to bankers being honest, blog policy, common decency and my mom would prohibit me from uttering a word on that topic.

The Government did not require the banks to burn the trash and now we as a nation are gleefully picking the same rubbish up that we just so recently dropped. One cannot say exactly, but indications are a great amount of the very same financial instruments that led to the collapse are being rebundled and sold in exactly the same way as before. The first stock market collapse was created by the financial industry but it carried all firms down with it. However, during the crash, not all stocks suffered the same level of decline the overwhelming bulk of the loss was in the financial sector. Strong profitable companies with cash in the bank like Wal-Mart and Exxon suffered only minor blips, McDonalds stock actually went up. The anchors dragging the market down were the financial corporations. They suffered anywhere from 50 percent declines to total collapse. So finance led the crash, well guess who is leading the recovery?

These very same banks and pseudo banks run by the very same people who drug us into financial meltdown. Moreover, how are their stocks rising? The market is rising because the very same companies, run by the very same people, are doing business the very same way, selling the very same crap. They are repackaging the “best” of the derivatives and selling them as conservative investments. Not that they are writing off the worst of their garbage. No, no, the greatest inflow of money has been into junk bonds and hedge funds.

Have they at least learned anything? No, all the firms still owe much more than they would be worth if liquidated. Several, like Chase are back to 32 to 1 debt ratios. That would be like earning $34,000 a year and owing over a million – make sense to you? Have they reduced the dependence on tricky hocus pocus finances? No, the latest derivative Wall Street is offering is based on the finance of individual movies – want to bet the nursing home on the latest CGI blockbuster – only to discover that Nichole Kidman has been cast as the lead?

This should be funny, but I find it hard to laugh. Are we this stupid? It can be argued that the bankers are geniuses, simply concluding “hey we were too big to fail before and now we are even bigger”. It seems that banking crises always come along to siphon off any wealth the middle class may have accumulated and these crises seem to be coming closer apart so perhaps they think 2 years is enough time before coming to us for another bailout. Anything seems possible after this. We can claim some secret intelligence for them – but what is our excuse? We are walking the very same path to ruin we followed before and all we can think is “hey hey lookee there shiny! SHINY!”