Masters of the Universe category archive

Via Balloon Juice, where Anne Laurie rounds up additional commentary.

At Philly dot com, Jeff Gelles cites banks’ complaints that they are wounded, yea! to the quick! by having their swipe fees regulated, then asks:

Or are we seeing something else – such as a banking industry that got used to fat profits from debit fees and hopes to maintain them by any means possible?

Follow the link to read his summary of the history of swipe fees (hint: they increased as the number of competitors providing debit cards decreased) and his answer to his question.

I was finishing off my DIY project yesterday and forgot to see the FDIC’s weekly hit list.

Man, one would think that, sooner or later, they would run out of banks to blank.

This week’s crop of responsible fiscals honored with extinction:

Country Bank, Aledo, Illinois

First State Bank, Cranford, New Jersey

Blue Ridge Savings Bank, Inc., Asheville, North Carolina

Piedmont Community Bank, Gray, Georgia

Glomarization considers the “businesses aren’t hiring because of uncertainty” trope. A nugget:

Why do people repeat the “uncertainty” line without making the people who claim uncertainty explain it?

I’ll tell you what uncertainty is. It’s not knowing whether you can pay the rent or put food on the table next month.

I am not the first to notice that our brave and fearless Galtian overlords are frequently reduced to melted puddles of mindless trembling because the future is an unknown.

The Chicago Trib reports that indicators for jobs for process servers and robosigners continue strong:

The number of U.S. homes that received a first-time default notice during the July to September quarter increased 14 percent compared to the second quarter, RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday.

That increase signals banks are moving more aggressively now against borrowers who have fallen behind on their mortgage payments than they have since industrywide foreclosure processing problems emerged last fall. Those problems resulted in a sharp drop in foreclosure activity this year.

Bloomberg, on the other hand, reacts to the same press release differently.

Foreclosure filings in the U.S. declined 34 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier as lenders reviewed paperwork related to delinquent loans and home seizures, according to RealtyTrac Inc.

A total of 610,337 properties received notices of default, auction or repossession, down from 930,437 a year earlier and up from 608,235 in the second quarter, the Irvine, California-based data seller said today in a report. One in every 213 U.S. households got a filing.

I think the two organizations are looking at different sets of numbers: “initial notices of default” vs. final notices of default and actual foreclosure actions, but it is difficult to tell from the relatively short stories.

Bank of America’s CEO defended his bank’s new $5 fee on debit cards on Wednesday, saying that customers and shareholders understand the bank has a “right to make a profit.”

No, they don’t.

They have a right to compete in the market place by providing a competitive product at a fair price.

If they fail, they have a right to go out of business.

This does not affect me.

I don’t use my debit card to buy things. I use either a credit card or that green stuff, whadyyacallit, oh, yeah, cash (emphasis added):

The thought of another bank fee really bothers Whitney Chitwood.

“It’s our money that we work hard for, and they’re just taking it from us,” said Chitwood, 22, who has a Bank of America checking account.

Next year, Bank of America Corp. plans to impose a $5 a month fee when customers use their debit cards for a purchase, whether they punch in a personal identification number or sign a receipt. Other banks, including Wells Fargo and SunTrust, are initiating similar fees in some markets.

The banks began initiating the fees in response to federal legislation, which took effect Oct. 1, that limits the “swipe” fees they can charge merchants for debit-card transactions. Bank officials say the fees will help offset the billions in revenue they expect to lose as a result of the new ceiling.

(Much more at the link.)

When I see persons whipping out the plastic to buy a 79-cent cup of coffee, I always wonder how they keep up with their checkbooks. (Then, when I read about the outrageous overdraft fees, I realized that they don’t.)

It highlights the larger issue, though: a change in the nature of banking as an industry over the past three decades. It has moved from valuing honest stewardship of customer accounts and secure, though not spectacular, profits from sound loans to high-stakes casino gambling.

Banks became gambling addicts, but, since they were the house and the house always wins, they guaranteed their winnings, changing the rules of the game to suit their greed need and burying those changes in unreadable “terms of service” notices that no one read because they were designed to be unreadable. Collectively, we now have the First National Bank of Rocky and Mugsy.

Now that reforms are mandating that they fix the wheel so it isn’t quite so crooked, banksters are looking for new ways to fix the wheel.

My father was a banker. He would be ashamed to admit that today.

Job prospects for robosigners and process servers remain strong in the mid-South. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports:

“There’s no way to know how many new properties are becoming delinquent based on foreclosure notices here,” he said. “It may mean that lenders are simply running notices on the most serious delinquencies. I know [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] had instituted some one-year moratoriums for the unemployed. There may be too many factors to really know anymore. Delinquency rates on all mortgages, based on Mortgage Bankers Association figures, have minimally come down this year but are still very, very high.”

During good years in metro Atlanta, there were between 2,000 and 3,000 (foreclosure–ed.) notices a month. They hit a peak in November of 2010 with 13,834, and were above 10,000 for the first three months of this year.

David Sirota reports on a recent psychological study. A nugget:

As the website Newser reported, the researchers “pitted a group of stockbrokers against a group of actual psychopaths in various computer simulations and intelligence tests and found that the money men were significantly more reckless, competitive, and manipulative.” Even more striking, the researchers note that achieving overall success was less important to the stock speculators than the sadistic drive “to damage their opponents.” The findings build on similar research in the recent past. In 1996, investigators at Glasgow Caledonian University discovered connections between psychopathy and successful financial speculation, concluding that “with the right parenting, (psychopaths) can become successful stockbrokers instead of serial killers.” Likewise, in 2004, researchers at the University of British Columbia reacted to similar findings and created a test to help firms detect “corporate psychopaths” within their ranks. That same year, the award winning-documentary “The Corporation” used World Health Organization metrics to show that if companies really are “people,” as our Supreme Court insists, then many of them are mentally ill.

I was too involved in watching the Phillies go through their annual October ritual of forgetting how to hit a baseball to check the FDIC’s list of ex-banks for this week.

Here is this week’s list of responsible fiscals which, like the Phillies, are out of the game:

Sun Security Bank, Ellington, Missouri

The RiverBank, Wyoming, Minnesota

The difference between the Phillies and the banksters is that baseball is only a game (except perhaps in Boston). Bank fraud, on the other hand . . . .

Image via Balloon Juice.

CLick the picture for a larger image.

Via ABL.

Bill Shein considers the “Occupy Wall Street” activists and sees hope. A nugget:

The young people in New York’s Liberty Square are informed with the knowledge that unemployment among their peers is at least double the national rate, with no relief in sight. They’re informed by the painful reality of mountains of student-loan debt. They know that prior generations have warmed the planet, but their generation will suffer the consequences if nothing is done. They know that millions have lost homes and jobs and retirement savings while an elite few were bailed out to return to business-as-usual. What more do they need to know?

Under the banner of “The Other 99 Percent,” these nonviolent activists, increasingly accompanied by Americans of all colors and ages and incomes, are showing us what love of country – and love of our fellow citizens – should look like.

Not coincidentally, these young people are among those most affected by new photo-ID requirements for voting that were fast-tracked through many state legislatures this year. Thus, those most likely to vote against the unacceptable status quo are being systematically excluded from democratic participation. Without money, and without a meaningful voice in elections, they’ve instead taken to the streets, their bodies and voices standing in for empty wallets and blocked ballots.

Harry Shearer interviews Eve Smith on the banksters’ antics.

Listen. Now. (Or download it and listen later. Whichever. Just make sure you listen to it.)

At Comically Vintage.

Banksters exercise their constitutional right to bonuses, private jets, and country club memberships. (I’m sure it’s in the Constitution somewhere because Glenn Beck told me so.)

Addendum, Later that Same Day:

Ed Quillen explains class war:

“Let me see if I understand this,” I said. “If I’m down and somebody’s standing with a boot on my throat, that’s just the way of the world. But if I try to push the boot off, that’s class warfare?”

Ziegler laughed. “You’re starting to understand. I think you’re getting it now, and the Committee can trust you to spin this properly.” He excused himself as he had another call.

A Heritage Foundation toady (yeah, I know, redundant) decides that the cause of the riots in Britain was “political correctness” run amok and that the cure is a return to the language of right and wrong.

Notably missing from her screed was any mention of right and wrong as it applies to Wall Street banksters, hedge fund managers, corporate bonus babies.

“Right and wrong” is irrelevant in their Galtian Paradise as they destroy economies, eliminate jobs, and steal the future from the poor and middle class.