On March 13, 1964 a news report from New York City horrified and shamed the nation. Catherine Genovese, a twenty-nine year old resident of Queens, had run through her neighborhood for more than thirty minutes, fleeing an attacker and screaming for help as almost forty locals looked on from their windows, but offered no assistance. No one came to Miss Genovese’s aid, no one bothered to call the police. She was attacked three times on the street, beaten, stabbed, raped and murdered. It was shocking, and we all condemned those callous, jaded and cowardly New Yorkers.
Make no mistake about it. You and me, we would have done something to help that young woman. We would have raced to her aid, overcome her attacker with no thought to our own safety and blushed when they called us heroes. “We only did what anyone would have done,” we would have demurred before the television news cameras.
What frauds we are! If there exists anywhere a people more cowardly than you and me, they have hidden themselves so well they cannot be discovered!
Every day we stand by and do nothing while our brothers, sisters, parents and children are cheated, pushed around, mugged, beat up and bruised by bullies and thugs. We avert our eyes, stick our fingers in our ears and pretend we neither see nor hear. We pay our protection money and hope the goons will leave us alone. Without the backbone even to defend ourselves, we are cowards of the worst sort.
For all our bluster, all our bravado, we puff up like cocks arrayed for battle, then fall on our sides like fainting goats when confronted with men wielding nothing more than papers—papers we let control our lives, papers which allow men in suits to have their way with us all.
Every day the loan sharks at Bank of America, Wells Fargo and the rest bully Americans, shoving millions around with interest rates that would shame Tony Soprano and terrorizing them with threats of losing their homes, jobs and property if they talk back or refuse to play ball. Millions cower before bank officers, bill collectors, bottom feeders of the legal profession and the politicians who do their bidding. The super rich get richer while moms, grandpas and children go hungry.
Slavery was abolished in this country a long time ago. Back when we fought wars for principle and cause, we waged a bloody war over it. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, and the Thirteenth Amendment banned slavery and involuntary servitude forever. Or, so we thought.
In 1999 Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX) led a legislative effort which effectively repealed the Thirteenth Amendment and cast millions of Americans into slavery once more. His efforts culminated in the passage of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, legislation billed as “an act to enhance competition in the financial services industry.” In fact, it was a bill that obscenely enhanced profits and authorized the enslavement of consumer debtors under the weight of previously unimagined predatory interest rates.
In 2005 a Congress in the pocket of the credit card industry tied another ball and chain on American consumers by taking away all effective bankruptcy relief with the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2005, transforming the United States into one enormous debtors’ prison.
You need to understand how this works. It is important.
Loan sharking has always been a popular crime on the poor side of town. If you grew up in a household where there was plenty of money, maybe you don’t know. Loan sharking is the business of loaning money to desperate people at extremely high rates of interest, and it has been a crime in every culture for thousands of years.
As an example, it is criminal usury in Pennsylvania to charge interest above 24% on a personal loan. Other states have similar limits. If I loan you a thousand dollars at 25%, I can be prosecuted and sent off to jail. If Mafia thugs loan you a grand at 30% interest, they can be arrested and imprisoned. If Bank of American charges you 40%, 50% or more for the same loan transaction, that’s just fine. So says the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.
The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) provides that national banks—you know, the one’s that issue credit cards and make auto loans, and take gobs and gobs of stimulus money from you and me—don’t have to abide by the same loan sharking laws as you, me and the Mafia. It provides that a national bank, without regard to the laws of your state, can charge you the highest interest rate allowed by any state in which the bank has a branch office.
You probably never thought of Sioux Falls, South Dakota as a financial mecca. Think again. In recent years it has been the world headquarters of banking obscenities, the opium den of the money changers. Here’s why.
Like the congressional whores who supported the passage of GLBA, the South Dakota legislature saw bait in the hands of the national banks, opted for money over chastity, and voted to repeal the state’s usury laws altogether. Anything goes in South Dakota.
Like shooting fish in a barrel, bank owned South Dakota legislators effectively murdered the consumer protection laws of every state in the union, and the state has never repented. Any bank with so much as a branch office in the financial badlands of South Dakota is free to charge any rate of interest it chooses to customers nationwide. How long do you suppose it took for the major banks to move their credit card operations to South Dakota?
Americans are losing their homes, losing their jobs to wage garnishments, and losing their families to the stresses of bone crushing debt. As consumers struggle to pay their bills, the credit card issuers continually hike their rates. One card issuer is now charging rates as high as 79.9% APR on cards issued to its lowest income consumers.
While progressive elected officials strive to curb the abuses of a financial industry out of control, the banks retreat to the wild west of Sioux Falls and defeat new consumer protection laws by simply raising interest rates. The Credit Card Bill of Rights passed early last year has been rendered a nullity before it even takes effect next month, thanks to the renegade state of South Dakota—the home, let’s not forget, of the most oppressed, neglected and abused Native American populations in the country. The home of Standing Rock and Pine Ridge.
Every hour of every day thousands upon thousands of beleaguered bill payers call the customer service numbers printed on the backs of their credit cards. They are desperate, they need relief from the punitive interest rates, hidden charges and unconscionable fees that are destroying family budgets. They humble themselves before agents of the ruling class overlords, and beg for relief, for mercy and forbearance. They receive none.
Every day the offices of consumer credit counseling services and predatory debt adjustment operations are swamped by consumers at their wit’s end, hoping to cut a deal. Hoping to salvage something of all they’ve worked for and to avoid the stigma of bankruptcy court. And, every day, debtors beyond hope turn to the court of last resort and find no relief in a law gutted by greed.
Judgments, liens, wage garnishments, bank levies and sheriff’s sales. Foreclosures, evictions, sickness, divorce, debt collector harassment, poverty and suicide. These evils and more are visited upon our neighbors by men in suits while we stand by and watch, while we say nothing.
You can bet that your congressional representative is not being harassed by bill collectors. Your senators are relaxing tonight in well appointed homes, feasting upon dinners bought with your labors. The CEOs of the national banks are living the lives that multi-million dollar salaries make possible. Across town, likely in your neighborhood, John and Jane Doe huddle over their rent-to-own dining table and pick through another plate of beans and weenies.
We are cowards of the worst sort.
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NPR reported yesterday that the number one concern of way too many of our citizens is the fact that TV commercials are much louder than the shows we watch. Our brave legislators agree and are going to answer to the people on this one although some said it might work better if consumers go out and purchase something that will monitor the higher volumed commercials themselves.
Our priorities are sort of a mess.
Having worked for a financial marketing company for twenty years, I am quite familiar with GLBA and other such legislation that has been passed over the last twenty years. Because I need health insurance, I continue to work for my company when I’d rather walk away and leave it forever. Some may think you over dramatize how these banks work – trust me folks – he is not. Sadly every word is true.
Americans should be more afraid of Citibank, Bank of America and the others than all the middle eastern terrorists combined. The banks are killing Americans every day with the support of our government.