Corporate Crooks Win Again

As is always the case the issue with credit cards is once again skewed to make it look like it’s the little people who are wrong while the capitalist crooks receive none of the blame.

From the time of the Depression up until the ’80’s, we had laws against usury, (usury means setting people up to fail) and now, without these protections the credit card companies have been setting people up to fail for decades.

Nancy Trejos journalist for the Washington Post said “…in the 1980s when the usury laws were relaxed, when credit scores were created, and suddenly card companies that used to have this one-size-fits-all approach were able to tailor terms and conditions, you know, according to the person's risk. Credit card companies were raising interest rates on existing balances for any time, for any reason. They were also charging excessive fees, not giving consumers enough time to make their payments, and they were doing some aggressive marketing of credit cards to college students, to people under 21.”

The Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act just singed by the president brings some measure of regulation to an industry which had been allowed to run rampant and make billions gouging Americans in excessive late fees and penalties.

With these new rules the credit card companies are threatening to raise interest rates on everyone, including all those who pay their bills on time! And they will be ‘forced’ to with hold credit because it’s too risky. Ha that’s a laugh, who owns these credit card companies? Banks, the same banks the taxpayer has bailed out for taking too much risk. Banks like JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America to name two.

Interest rates on credit cards may go to eighteen percent yet we the tax payers lent JPMorgan Chase 40 billion to buy Bear Stearns at three and a half percent interest. How does that work?

Just like we’re told the financial collapse was due to people who couldn’t pay their mortgages, banks issuing credit cards say credit will be tighter with higher rates due to the new laws.

This new legislation is only on the surface, because it doesn’t return us to the protections against usury, credit card companies will find other ways to bilk us out of billions. Subsequently, the capitalist crooks ruling this nation will continue to set us up then pull the rug out from underneath our feet, while our paid off politicians look the other way.

The Real Social Security Crisis

Social Security will be bankrupt in 2037.
FDR signed Social Security into law to protect anyone who earned a living against the poverty of old age and the loss of a job. Ever since, the Republicans have wanted to dismantle Social Security. Witness the failed Republican attempt under President George Bush to privatize Social Security (imagine if they had, all that money would be gone, stolen by the corporate crooks on Wall Street).

The whole idea behind the Republican façade of “less government“, is to bankrupt the federal government so that social programs like Social Security and Medicare become insolvent.

In 1981 President Reagan increased the Social Security tax to 12.4 percent split between employers and employees while decreasing taxes on the wealthy, the Republican idea of good governance. We were told the increased taxes were to create a nest egg for when the baby boomers retired. Now we’re being told as the boomers retire, it’ll create a financial tsunami.

The “crisis” facing Social Security is that presidents and Congress have “borrowed” from the trust fund leaving an IOU with a promise to pay back the money when Social Security benefits come due. Now that pay back time is arriving, the funds are not there for the ‘government’ to pay back its obligation to the tax payers.

All of this leaves the president in a difficult position. If he doesn’t gut benefits, he’ll be labeled a tax and spend liberal. If he does gut benefits, then he’s not standing up for the American citizen to whom that money rightly belongs.

The worrisome part is that we’re now hearing this administration talk of reforming “entitlement programs”. Will the president stand up for the American people or will he back down as he did on cutting farm subsidies to agri-business and eliminating off shore tax havens. As soon as the howls of opposition went up in DC and in the corporate world, the president backed down.

The corporate crooks on Wall Street stole peoples’ pensions and the government stole everyone’s’ Social Security money that we‘ve paid for with every single paycheck we‘ve ever earned. Why do you think the Founders of our country had a strong distrust of banks and governments? So much so that they revolted and it’s high time we do the same.

Wealth Transference

Last week the Senate defeated a mortgage measure to allow bankruptcy judges to modify mortgages for thousands of Americans in foreclosure. The vote was 45-51 and according to an AP article the Democrats “lamented they were powerless, with the 45 votes falling short of the 60 to overcome procedural hurdles.”

No kidding they’re powerless, they’re powerless against taking our millions away from the lobbyists who pay them to vote their way; in favor of the capitalist crooks.

In years past a bankruptcy judge had the ability to modify a mortgage until the Republican controlled Congress under President Bush changed the bankruptcy rules (at the request of the credit card companies, and the banks who own them) to eliminate this rule.

Now with the Democrats in control they had the opportunity to change the rules back, and they refused. Not only do they refuse, they whine about being helpless because of the “procedural rules“. Well they’re not as helpless as those Americans facing foreclosure or the loss of a job. Just think, these whining Democrats have all that lobbying money to back them up while the rest of us are lucky enough to still be able to pay the mortgage. Just goes to show no matter which party is in control of Congress, the real control lies with whoever supplies the payoff to campaign funds in the millions. It’s all influence peddling dollars.

These banking lobbyists work for the same banks who for decades have made billions from us. The Washington Spectator’s editor Lou Dubose reflects on liberal House Democrat Henry B. Gonzalez who chaired the House Banking Committee from 1989 to 1995 who reminded Lou that “In 1988 a thirty-year fixed rate mortgage required the average family to pay for its house twice-once in principal and once in interest. He described mortgage lending as a vast transfer of wealth from the working class to the stocks-and-bonds class.”

It is this transference of wealth which has created the situation we’re in today, with the power and wealth in the hands of the few.

The president supported this bill but backed off when he faced stiff opposition from the banking lobby, which is further evidence that no matter the party in the White House, or Congress, Republican, or Democrat, they are all complicit in this transference of wealth to the capitalist crooks.