Hey, do you like to stay in the best hotels, feast on lavish banquet buffets, tank up on expensive liquor and enjoy expensive, but highly stimulating, “professional” companionship? Well, that could be your life as a financial services industry crime boss. Too bad, you didn’t go to business school. Too bad you weren’t born into a crime family.
The nation’s top crime bosses, in a reprise of Al Capone’s cabinet meetings, are convening in a Chicago hotel as this is being written. The top dogs of the American Bankers Association, the powerful and well organized terrorist network which routinely carries out attacks against Americans on American soil, are at this moment plotting, scheming and conspiring to cheat, defraud, exploit, persecute, evict, foreclose and bankrupt middle and lower class Americans. So grand is the scale of the criminal conspiracy under discussion that it was necessary to call a full blown convention, a meeting of the bank families, to discuss it. The hotel rooms, banquet feasts, booze and “professional” companions are on your dime.
At the top of convention agenda is the creation and deployment of a war chest to battle President Obama’s proposed Consumer Protection Agency. Even Fox News won’t lie for free, and television advertising is going to be a necessity.
Americans don’t read. A campaign of television commercials will be required to persuade them that a Consumer Protection Agency is an unnecessary and dangerous step toward socialism. Most likely, Ronald Reagan said something once that can be made to sound like a warning against government interference in the matter of your Bank of America statement. It’ll take some money to dig that up.
You’d believe Ronald Reagan, right? So will a lot of other people. That’s a problem.
Are you scared? You ought to be. Those bankers are powerful people. They can do more damage in an hour than Al Quaeda can do in a decade. They do it almost every hour of every day. You need to stop them before the tentacles of their conspiracy slither into your home and suck your pockets and piggy bank empty.
I’m exaggerating, you’re thinking. Blowing things up and out of all proportion. Think so? Think about this…
Did you know that banks will rake in more than 38 billion dollars in overdraft fees this year? Can you imagine that they’ve spent a fortune coming up with a scheme to help them rake in even more?
Yep, now the banks are using a sophisticated software application which enables them to process your checks in just the right order to produce the greatest number of overdrafts. Check this out…
Suppose you’ve got $100 in your bank account, and you’ve got five outstanding checks in the amounts of $33, $11, $11, $10 and $8 for a total of $73. Now, suppose you write a check for $60, which would create an overdraft of $33. So, you would expect to pay a stiff overdraft fee of thirty bucks or so. Right? Well, think again.
If the bank paid the $60 check and the four smallest checks which total $40 ($8 +$10 + $11 + $11 = $40), you would have an overdraft of $33 represented by one check, and you would, indeed, pay only one $30 overdraft fee. But, that’s not the way the bank’s going to handle it.
No, sir. You’re gonna have FOUR OVERDRAFT FEES totaling $120 because the bank is going to pay your checks in the order of biggest to smallest. Once the bank has paid the $60 and $33 checks, it will then pay one of the $11 checks (creating an overdraft of $4), then the other $11 checks (creating a $15 overdraft), and so on through the other two outstanding checks. Four overdrafts! Gotcha!
The bankers look at these overdrafts as short term loans (kind of like payday loans) for which they can charge up to 1000% interest, even more. Usury laws don’t apply, of course, because these whopping charges are overdraft fees, not interest. No, no, no… not interest!
And, hey… they can do the same thing with debit card and credit card purchases to compound those overdraft and over the limit fees. There’s just no end to the fun!
Tried to get a home mortgage modification lately? You may remember that just a few months ago, when the bankers soaked us all for billions and billions and billions of our bailout tax dollars, the President let them know that he expected them to use some of that money to help bailout consumers who were in danger of losing their homes. The administration established guidelines for mortgage modifications, and provided funding to ease the burden on the banks.
Well, their burden got eased. They discovered that it was far more profitable to simply keep all the money for themselves. Why go to the time, trouble and expense of modifying mortgages, they figured, if the loot was already in their hands? Good thinking, right?
If you can find someone who has actually received a permanent mortgage modification please alert the press—or maybe you can score some small finder’s fee from an amusement operator who specializes in the display of human curiosities.
The list of tricks, traps, cons, shams and damn cheats those bankers have up their sleeves could fill up, well… a big convention hall in Chicago. So, where are the cops? Why aren’t they raiding the joint?
They can’t. Those who haven’t been laid off are up-to-their-butts busy carrying out eviction orders. They’ve got so many people to put out into the street that they didn’t even notice that the bankers had sneaked into town.
The word out of Chicago tonight is that the level of chatter is high at the ABA convention and on its website. The threat level is elevated, and the country should brace itself for new attacks in the coming weeks.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Every word in this blog is correct and right on target. Having worked for a marketing firm for twenty years that primarily provides banks and credit unions with benefits to offer their consumers, I can vouch for every claim stated here. One of the largest culprits is Bank of America. They have the highest reported unethical practices going. I once had four accounts with good ole B of A – I now have NO accounts with B of A. I got tired of them figuring out ways to steal my money and being successful at it. I know other banks that are just as quilty and unethical but these folks are the top dogs in the hunt. If I could conduct my personal finances by burying the money jar in the backyard and pay for everything in cash, I would.
Amen to everything she said!