Masters of the Universe category archive
Chasing Votes 0
Jamie Dimon is upset that Hillary Clinton doesn’t care enough about bankers’ fee-fees.
Hell, if I hadn’t been supporting her already, this would have turned the trick.
The Great Migration 0
I have been banking at Wells-Fargo.
It wasn’t a choice. It just happened.
I was banking at a regional bank that got gobbled up by Wachovia. Then, two minutes before the bubble burst, Wachovia bought Fly-by-Night Mortgage Company, Inc., and was taken down by the bursting bubble, so I ended up with Wells.
Though I have not had a bad experience with any local Wells-Fargo branches or any Wells-Fargo employees, it is difficult not to conclude from recent news reports that Wells-Fargo has a deeply corrupt corporate culture at the highest levels.
As my first wife would have said, they have plucked my last nerve.
Accordingly, I have spent most of the last two days moving my banking business to another bank. (This was made easier by my choosing to use minimal online billpay. I’m not agin’ it; I just feared that I wouldn’t be able to keep track of it, so I still write “checks”–they are made from paper and they take the place of currency; you may have heard of them. Consequently, I had only about four online thingees to change.)
Yesterday I called up my pension fund (I’m old) to change my direct deposit from Wells to my new bank. After we had completed our business, the obliging fellow on the phone told me that they had gotten “lots of phone calls moving from Wells-Fargo” in the last week (and good for the callers, say I!).
I reminded him of the news stories. He said, “Oh, yeah. I remember reading something about that.” What followed was a cordial discussion about how a three-piece suit seems to be a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card and about how he and I were on the same wave-length about bankers and banking, but I digress. . . .
Now, I shall wait a month or so to be sure that everything is copacetic and then I shall finally forego Fargo for all time.
A. Workers in China 0
Q. Who polishes the Apple?
El Reg reports
(snip)
“Currently, Apple’s profits are declining, and the effects of this decline have been passed on to suppliers. To mitigate the impact, Pegatron has taken some covert measures to exploit workers.”
Follow the link for the complete story.
Only In It for the Money 0
Wendell Potter doesn’t try to hide his disgust at Aetna’s antics.
If that means making it more difficult for low- and middle-income Americans to get the medical care they need, so be it. “Too bad, so sad,” to use a phrase one of my former colleagues used to say when people complained about the way health insurers routinely screw their customers.
(snip)
In fact, it is Aetna’s government business (Medicare and Medicaid–ed.) that is the only segment that is growing. Aetna and most of the other for-profit insurers have been losing private-paying customers on a regular basis for some time. But not to worry. As long as Uncle Sam has the Medicare and Medicaid faucets wide open and flowing straight into the insurers’ bank accounts, they couldn’t care less.
Read the rest.
The Fee Hand of the Market (Update) 0
Monopoly: it’s not just a game; it’s a business plan.
Addendum, Later that Same Day:
At The Guardian, Liz Richardson Voyles writes of living with her daughter’s food allergies, which necessitates having EpiPens in the ready. A snippet:
The World Is Their Oyster (and Their Oyster Knives Are in Hock) 0
I was lucky. My parents paid for my college education. Back in the olden days, when I was a young ‘un, that was indeed possible for middle class families. Hell, when I was a young ‘un, there was still a “middle class.”
That was before college tuition became incredibly expensive and student loans became an instrument for perpetuating penury and paying for banksters’ country-club memberships.
Aside:
I got a letter today asking me to contribute to some memorial for Ronald Reagan. I shall answer it with an envelope full of subscription cards for The Nation, hoping that the senders will read it and learn something.
But they won’t.