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  • Plan to Change Student Lending Sets Up a Fight – NYTimes.com

    April 13th, 2009 [Banking, Education, Financial, General]

    Plan to Change Student Lending Sets Up a Fight – NYTimes.com.

    Well, hey, that’s great – now what is to be done about the millions of Americans who are paying almost all of their monthly income straight to the banks for loan repayment? The interest rates have gotten way out of hand. I have student loans at higher interest rates than some of my credit cards. Obscene. Nay – obscane.


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    The belief that the wealthy are worthy is waning – Los Angeles Times

    March 19th, 2009 [Banking, Civil Rights, Financial, General]

    The belief that the wealthy are worthy is waning – Los Angeles Times.

    That the point is even open for discussion suggests that a sea change is taking place on the American political scene. For decades, the wealthy have been held up as people to be admired, victors in the Darwinian economic struggle by virtue of their personal ingenuity and hard work.

    Americans consistently supported fiscal policies that undermined middle- and working-class interests partially because they saw themselves as rich-people-in-waiting: Given time, toil and the magic of compound interest, anyone could retire a millionaire.

    That mind-set has all but been eradicated by the damage sustained by the average worker's nest egg, combined with the spectacle of bankers and financial engineers maintaining their lifestyles with multimillion-dollar bonuses while the submerged 99% struggle for oxygen.

    (emphasis added)

    I hope his predictions are right. For FAR too long we’ve been living in an a faux democracy where 1% of the people own more than a third of the wealth, and the top 20% own more than 80% of it. The purpose of income tax was to raise revenue for the government, but it was mostly to prevent an aristocracy from forming. Are we there yet?


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    Madoff worth more than $820 million, document says – CNN.com

    March 14th, 2009 [Banking, Financial, General]

    Madoff worth more than $820 million, document says – CNN.com.

    All the reason to liquidate his estate and divvy it up among his victims.


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    Stewart seen as winner in showdown with Cramer – CNN.com

    March 13th, 2009 [Banking, Financial, General, Television]

    Stewart seen as winner in showdown with Cramer – CNN.com.

    I don’t know why anybody is surprised by this – Jon Stewart always takes his guests to task when he doesn’t agree with them.

    In any event, I (and most people I know) have been saying all along that Jon Stewart provides the best news/commentary on TV right now… glad to see he’s still going strong post-election. His coverage of the 2008 election was the only thing that kept me sane throughout the whole ordeal, even as it drove me crazy to see what was going on. The man deserves a prize.

    Watch the full episode of The Daily Show with guest Jim Cramer.


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    Another twist for the unemployed: Debit card fees – CNN.com

    March 13th, 2009 [Banking, Financial, General]

    Another twist for the unemployed: Debit card fees – CNN.com.

    According to the U.S. Department of Labor, 30 states offer direct deposit cards to the unemployed. Many of the nation’s biggest banks have contracts with the individual states. JP Morgan Chase, for instance, has contracts with seven states and has pending deals with two others, according to Chase spokesman John T. Murray. About 10 states, the Labor Department says, pay by check only.

    The National Consumer Law Center says fees range from 40 cents to a high of $3 per transaction, if the debit card is used at an out-of-network ATM. Most banks give jobless debit card users one free withdrawal per deposit period, which averages every other week in most states. But consumer advocates, including the Law Center, say the unemployed “should be able to obtain cash and perform basic functions with no fees.”

    Yeah – um, aren’t the banks getting enough taxpayer money without gunning for a share of unemployment funds, too? Next thing you know, they’ll be pulling this same shady business with Social Security checks.


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    Citigroup breaks the buck – Mar. 5, 2009

    March 5th, 2009 [Banking, Civil Rights, Financial, General]

    Citigroup breaks the buck – Mar. 5, 2009.

    This really SUCKS for people who have worked for Citibank for 30+ years, and have relied on the promise of a pension, and stayed with Citibank because they had a pension plan, and have received their annual bonuses in the form of stock options. Hey, guess what? These people now have little to nothing remaining of the pensions, healthcare, and options they earned over three decades’ span. We’re not talking about executives, CEOs and rich investors. We’re talking about middle class employees. What are they supposed to do now?


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    Credit card holders livid about ‘rate-jacking’ – CNN.com

    December 17th, 2008 [Banking, Financial, General]

    Credit card holders livid about ‘rate-jacking’ – CNN.com.

    Count me in on that one. All of my credit card companies pulled that baloney of “We’re jacking up your interest by at least 10%, but of course you can opt out… if you NEVER USE YOUR CARD AGAIN!” But Citibank was the only one that actually required me to CLOSE my account if I didn’t wish to have a 20%+ rate (bearing in mind that my current rate is under 10%). It’s absolute bullshit.


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    A wee bit ‘o credit card fraud

    November 24th, 2008 [Banking, Financial, General]

    So… back in April I remember seeing a charge on my credit card for like, $4 and change. It was from Paypal, from a company called “SWAGVAULT.” I vaguely remember calling the company to figure out what the hell the charge was for, but I never got through to them. This was right around the time that I was dealing with some medical problems, and I was totally disoriented and not really wanting to deal with chasing around a $5 bill – so I wound up just assuming that it was from one of the comic book vendors on eBay, as I had recently bought a bunch of Buffy comics, all for around $4-$8.

    Well, today I tried to add my credit card to PayPal, and it told me that my card number was already linked to another Paypal account! I figured, ah, maybe I linked it to my wife’s account when we were paying bills for the wedding… so I checked her account. No card. Then I thought, hm, maybe it’s on that other PayPal account I set up a long time ago. So I checked there too. I did find $90 I forgot I had on that account (SWEET! Hey, I ain’t complainin’!), but NO CARD.

    So I called PayPal and got on the phone with some random person in a call center, and she told me that the account was linked to another email address. She couldn’t tell me which one, though.

    Great. That helps! Blegh.

    So she transferred me to somebody in the dispute resolution department, and he refused to tell me what email address the card was linked to.

    GREAT! More help!

    He was able to tell me the domain name of the account’s email address, at least, at which point I was just like, “Oh FUCK.” I don’t USE that mail service.

    So I convinced him to at least tell me if there had been any charges, and if so, when, so I could look them up in my credit card statement. He was very, um, reticent about it. Don’t get me wrong; the guy was perfectly nice, and was really helpful and apologetic about not being able to give me more information – but these agents can be kind of coy when it comes to getting information out of them in the first place.

    Luckily he was willing to suggest to me that I “might want to look” around March or April of this year. So I looked at March and April… nothing. Aha – but April’s charges are on the May statement. So I looked at May, and tada! There it was. That damned $4.xx charge from PAYPAL – SWAGVAULT.COM. FINALLY, the dam of information was broken – once I was able to identify the date and amount, he was able to give me the full name linked to the account.

    That was the one and only charge made to my credit card, thankfully, but that didn’t stop me from calling and requesting a new credit card. Ironically, what started me off with all my credit card debt was a $250 fraudulent charge when I was 18 years old and making no money. (That seemed like a hell of a lot back then). They never did reverse that $250 charge, despite many attempts to report the fraud – but fortunately this time around they were more than happy to refund me my $4 and change and send me a new card.

    The moral of the story… even if you do lots of online shopping, make sure you recognize each and every charge on your bill, because fraudulent charges can show up in any amount, and one scammed charge is one scam too many.


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    U.S. ready to debut plan – Oct. 13, 2008

    October 14th, 2008 [Banking, Election 2008, Financial, General, News, US]

    U.S. ready to debut plan – Oct. 13, 2008.

    Do you ever wonder if this isn’t just the greatest heist of all time? Do you wake up in the middle of the night sometimes wondering how much of that $700 billion of our money is going to wind up in the offshore bank accounts of the top .05% of America’s wealthiest Republican puppeteers? Do you ever wonder if King Georgie is going to help himself to a share of it before he heads out of office? How many of Wall Street’s CEOs are REALLY not going to see massive financial perks from this bailout?

    How much of this money is going to bail out the economy, and how much of it is going to leak out of the economy into the wealthiest Americans’ personal vaults?

    I have no answers – only lots and LOTS of questions.


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    Congress unveils rescue bill (CNN)

    September 29th, 2008 [Banking, Financial, General]

    Congress unveils rescue bill (CNN).

    I still think it’s just amazing how it’s become the accepted convention to use the $700 billion as the baseline for this bailout. Where did this number come from? Why are we even accepting that Congress and the taxpayers somehow owe Wall Street any kind of bailout? And I know the snarky comment is going to be that “owe” is exactly the operative word here, since so much of this is based on mortgages, or so we’re told. But again, these banks were greedy and took a risk based on that greed. Why do the rest of us have to pay for their hunger for money and their willingness to push people to borrow beyond their ability to repay?

    Why isn’t this money going towards the establishment of a universal healthcare system? Aren’t skyrocketing healthcare costs another HUGE reason why people are declaring bankruptcy and walking away from their homes? Even if they’re not, nobody can possibly claim that healthcare costs are not damaging the economy. Shouldn’t this be our number one priority, considering that people are dying?

    Of course, they could just give this money back to the taxpayers, in a real economic stimulus package… but that would never fly. They’re only interested in giving us chump change, not real change.


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    Michael Moore on the “bailout”

    September 29th, 2008 [Banking, Financial, General]

    From Michael Moore‘s website:

    Friends,

    Let me cut to the chase. The biggest robbery in the history of this country is taking place as you read this. Though no guns are being used, 300 million hostages are being taken. Make no mistake about it: After stealing a half trillion dollars to line the pockets of their war-profiteering backers for the past five years, after lining the pockets of their fellow oilmen to the tune of over a hundred billion dollars in just the last two years, Bush and his cronies — who must soon vacate the White House — are looting the U.S. Treasury of every dollar they can grab. They are swiping as much of the silverware as they can on their way out the door.

    No matter what they say, no matter how many scare words they use, they are up to their old tricks of creating fear and confusion in order to make and keep themselves and the upper one percent filthy rich. Just read the first four paragraphs of the lead story in last Monday’s New York Times and you can see what the real deal is:

    “Even as policy makers worked on details of a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, Wall Street began looking for ways to profit from it.

    “Financial firms were lobbying to have all manner of troubled investments covered, not just those related to mortgages.

    “At the same time, investment firms were jockeying to oversee all the assets that Treasury plans to take off the books of financial institutions, a role that could earn them hundreds of millions of dollars a year in fees.

    “Nobody wants to be left out of Treasury’s proposal to buy up bad assets of financial institutions.”

    Unbelievable. Wall Street and its backers created this mess and now they are going to clean up like bandits. Even Rudy Giuliani is lobbying for his firm to be hired (and paid) to “consult” in the bailout.

    The problem is, nobody truly knows what this “collapse” is all about. Even Treasury Secretary Paulson admitted he doesn’t know the exact amount that is needed (he just picked the $700 billion number out of his head!). The head of the congressional budget office said he can’t figure it out nor can he explain it to anyone.

    And yet, they are screeching about how the end is near! Panic! Recession! The Great Depression! Y2K! Bird flu! Killer bees! We must pass the bailout bill today!! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

    Falling for whom? NOTHING in this “bailout” package will lower the price of the gas you have to put in your car to get to work. NOTHING in this bill will protect you from losing your home. NOTHING in this bill will give you health insurance.

    Health insurance? Mike, why are you bringing this up? What’s this got to do with the Wall Street collapse?

    It has everything to do with it. This so-called “collapse” was triggered by the massive defaulting and foreclosures going on with people’s home mortgages. Do you know why so many Americans are losing their homes? To hear the Republicans describe it, it’s because too many working class idiots were given mortgages that they really couldn’t afford. Here’s the truth: The number one cause of people declaring bankruptcy is because of medical bills. Let me state this simply: If we had had universal health coverage, this mortgage “crisis” may never have happened.

    This bailout’s mission is to protect the obscene amount of wealth that has been accumulated in the last eight years. It’s to protect the top shareholders who own and control corporate America. It’s to make sure their yachts and mansions and “way of life” go uninterrupted while the rest of America suffers and struggles to pay the bills. Let the rich suffer for once. Let them pay for the bailout. We are spending 400 million dollars a day on the war in Iraq. Let them end the war immediately and save us all another half-trillion dollars!

    I have to stop writing this and you have to stop reading it. They are staging a financial coup this morning in our country. They are hoping Congress will act fast before they stop to think, before we have a chance to stop them ourselves. So stop reading this and do something — NOW! Here’s what you can do immediately:

    1. Call or e-mail Senator Obama. Tell him he does not need to be sitting there trying to help prop up Bush and Cheney and the mess they’ve made. Tell him we know he has the smarts to slow this thing down and figure out what’s the best route to take. Tell him the rich have to pay for whatever help is offered. Use the leverage we have now to insist on a moratorium on home foreclosures, to insist on a move to universal health coverage, and tell him that we the people need to be in charge of the economic decisions that affect our lives, not the barons of Wall Street.

    2. Take to the streets. Participate in one of the hundreds of quickly-called demonstrations that are taking place all over the country (especially those near Wall Street and DC).

    3. Call your Representative in Congress and your Senators. (click here to find their phone numbers). Tell them what you told Senator Obama.

    When you screw up in life, there is hell to pay. Each and every one of you reading this knows that basic lesson and has paid the consequences of your actions at some point. In this great democracy, we cannot let there be one set of rules for the vast majority of hard-working citizens, and another set of rules for the elite, who, when they screw up, are handed one more gift on a silver platter. No more! Not again!

    Yours,
    Michael Moore
    MMFlint@aol.com
    MichaelMoore.com

    P.S. Having read further the details of this bailout bill, you need to know you are being lied to. They talk about how they will prevent golden parachutes. It says NOTHING about what these executives and fat cats will make in SALARY. According to Rep. Brad Sherman of California, these top managers will continue to receive million-dollar-a-month paychecks under this new bill. There is no direct ownership given to the American people for the money being handed over. Foreign banks and investors will be allowed to receive billion-dollar handouts. A large chunk of this $700 billion is going to be given directly to Chinese and Middle Eastern banks. There is NO guarantee of ever seeing that money again.

    P.P.S. From talking to people I know in DC, they say the reason so many Dems are behind this is because Wall Street this weekend put a gun to their heads and said either turn over the $700 billion or the first thing we’ll start blowing up are the pension funds and 401(k)s of your middle class constituents. The Dems are scared they may make good on their threat. But this is not the time to back down or act like the typical Democrat we have witnessed for the last eight years. The Dems handed a stolen election over to Bush. The Dems gave Bush the votes he needed to invade a sovereign country. Once they took over Congress in 2007, they refused to pull the plug on the war. And now they have been cowered into being accomplices in the crime of the century. You have to call them now and say “NO!” If we let them do this, just imagine how hard it will be to get anything good done when President Obama is in the White House. THESE DEMOCRATS ARE ONLY AS STRONG AS THE BACKBONE WE GIVE THEM. CALL CONGRESS NOW.


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    The Subprime Mortgage Primer

    September 25th, 2008 [Banking, Financial, General]

    The Subprime Mortgage Primer.

    Everything you wanted to know about the sub-prime mortgage crisis (or, okay, like, some of the stuff you wanted to know). In stick figures.


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    Federal government institutes new rules to curb “shady” home loan practices – but what about the renters?

    July 14th, 2008 [Banking, Financial, General, Law & Politics, News]

    From CNN: “In a nod to consumer advocates, regulators require lenders to evaluate subprime borrowers’ ability to pay while banning most prepayment penalties.Read more.

    What I want to know is this: What is being done about the equally shady practice of some property owners who collect rent money while their property goes into foreclosure? A lot of people are losing the roof over their heads because their landlords have decided not to pay their mortgages, instead pocketing the rent money as long as they can before the house goes into foreclosure and the tenants are evicted by the bank, through no fault of their own. Frequently, the tenants have no idea that they are in any danger until the eviction notice is served. In the meantime, they continue to pay rent, while the landlords don’t bother to maintain or repair the property, since they’re going to lose it anyway. Shouldn’t renter’s rights be protected as well? Homeowners are not the only victims of the subprime mortgage fiasco.


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    ING Direct will change the way you do banking!

    May 15th, 2007 [Banking, Financial, General, Technology, Web]

    Use this link to get your ING Direct Orange Savings account now!

    I would like, once again, to extoll the virtues of ING Direct, my FAVORITE BANK EVER. And that’s saying a LOT!

    My favorite ING Direct services:

    Orange Savings: Get 4.5% APY with NO minimum! This account is KILLER, and simply cannot be matched anywhere else! If you use this with your Electric Orange checking account, the transfers are immediate; you don’t even have to wait a few days.

    Electric Orange Checking: FANTASTIC, WONDERFUL electronic checking account. You can get paper checks if you need them, on a check by check basis, but most transactions are completed entirely online, which is how many of us already do our banking. Better still, you get about 4% interest on it, and overdraft fees are charged more like finance charges on credit cards, so you don’t get an obscenely high bank fee for a $3 overdraft! This has got to be my FAVORITE feature.

    Orange CDs: High interest CDs ranging from a few months to a few years, with no minimum balance. You can get a rate over 5%!

    In general, ING has some of the highest interest rates around, especially those Orange savings accounts with no minimum balance. Right now it’s at about 4.5%, but it goes up fairly frequently.

    Use this link to get your ING Direct Orange Savings account now!


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    Yes! Electric Orange Checking At Last!!!

    February 4th, 2007 [Banking, Financial]

    My partner and I absolutely ADORE ING Direct. ING is a bank that deals primarily with savings and investments, but they finally, FINALLY have a checking account, and I’m so excited. Seriously. This is how I know I’m getting old – I get excited about a new bank service.

    So yes – Electric Orange Checking! You can get paper checks if you need them, on a check by check basis, but most transactions are completed entirely online, which is how many of us already do our banking. Better still, you get a little over 3% interest on it, and overdraft fees are charged more like finance charges on credit cards, so you don’t get an obscenely high bank fee for a $3 overdraft!

    ING has some of the highest interest rates around on savings accounts, especially savings accounts with no minimum balance. Right now I think it’s at about 4.5%. If you use the link I send to you and make an initial deposit of $250, you get $25 extra deposited into your account (and I get a referral bonus, yay). If you make less then $250 initial deposit I get no referral and you get no bonus, but you still get the way nifty interest rate and a great no-minimum-balance savings account. It’s all up to you! They also have great CD accounts with no minimum balances.


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