The University of Zurich conducted a psychological study and determined that bankers are liars. Color me surprised.
Also, this will not change the minds of those convinced that if we only got government out of the way, we’d have a free market paradise where everyone acts in the best long term interest of themselves and their companies.
Proverbs 17:5:
He who mocks the poor taunts his Maker; He who rejoices at calamity will not go unpunished.
Your free market at work:
Tens of thousands of Americans who went through bankruptcy are still haunted by debts long after — sometimes as long as a decade after — federal judges have extinguished the bills in court.
The problem, state and federal officials suspect, is that some of the nation’s biggest banks ignore bankruptcy court discharges, which render the debts void. Paying no heed to the courts, the banks keep the debts alive on credit reports, essentially forcing borrowers to make payments on bills that they do not legally owe.
The practice — a subtle but powerful tactic that effectively holds the credit report hostage until borrowers pay — potentially breathes new life into the pools of bad debt that are bought by financial firms.
One of the reasons I left the Republican party and the Libertarians was because it became increasingly clear with the wake of the Great Recession that no matter how well trusting the free market to act in its own long term best interests worked in theory, in practice, companies (especially large corporations and big banks) were thieving amoral sociopaths who would sell their mother for organ harvesting and sex work if it meant seeing their personal bonuses or stocks rise 1%.
We need an activist government that really polices these institutions. And I’m not talking about the cozy regulatory apparatus we have now that impose small fines that the institutions can write off as the cost of doing business. I’m talking about real cops with real handcuffs and real guns that will haul off the executives of these organizations to real jails.
In case you were wondering how the banking sector was doing these days after destroying the world’s economy, making life sufficiently miserable for millions, and absconding with an as yet unknown amount of taxpayer subsidies to keep them afloat, followed by a concerted effort by Republicans and Democrats to protect the whole shebang from anything resembling a criminal investigation and lengthy jail sentences. Turns out, having friends in Washington when you’re con job explodes in your face can be very profitable.
The six biggest U.S. banks are projected to post a 35 percent increase in first-quarter profit. That may fail to prolong an 18-month rally in their shares as the firms struggle to boost revenue.
The banks are set to report $19.9 billion in combined net income.
The statistics are staggering. According to the Census Bureau, the nation’s poverty rate is at its highest level in decades. More than 46 million people — one in seven Americans — are living below the poverty line, 16.4 million of them children. Another 30 million Americans are just a lost job or serious illness away from joining them. And in the last six years alone, more than 20 million people have joined the ranks of those relying on food stamps to get by.
But I’m sure if we only cut Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare spending and gave JP Morgan another tax break, that those 46 million folks would be right as rain.
I don’t see how this is anything but a profoundly stupid thing to do.
What you are, in essence, telling Europeans in countries that have gotten or requested bailouts is that their personal money in the bank is no longer safe and will be taken to bail out foreign lenders. That leaves people with zero incentive to put their money into savings and every incentive to move their capital elsewhere.
And they know this because Cyprus has declared a bank holiday through Wednesday. They hope to pass the bill authorizing this theft before people have a chance to get their money out. If I were Greek, Italian, Irish, or Portuguese and had money in a local bank, I’d be getting it out now.
Edit: For misspelling the name of the country I was talking about and reinforcing the stereotype that Americans know nothing of geography, I deduct 10 points from myself.
A good article:
There is no question about who is responsible for tanking the country’s economy over the previous decade. There is no question about the general philosophy that underlay this great act of public pillage and economic rapine. There is no question that the great majority of the American people want action taken on their behalf against the people who looted most of the economy and then destroyed what was left, all the while demanding that the American people make them whole for all the damage they had done to…wait for it…the American people. Nobody seriously argues with any of this; Senator Elizabeth Warren hasn’t become a YouTube sensation simply because she presents well, although she does. It’s because she’s roasting all the right people which, given all that’s gone on since the consequence of all the looting fell on the country’s head, seems like a revolutionary act.
If the Republicans truly want to take the White House in 2016, the first thing they should do is go and find themselves another Teddy Roosevelt who promises to take a 2×4 and anti-trust legislation to the financial industry until all of the big banks become lots and lots of little regional banks.
Seriously, go read this… if you read nothing else I’ve linked to on this blog, go read this.
Oh, come on, Mr. Government Regulators, stop oppressing the Producers.
I mean, sure, they laundered at least $250,000,000,000 for the Iranian regime, but they’re really, really sorry… that they were caught doing it and that should count as something, right?
Let’s see… I’ll take the under and give Benjamin Lawsky about three weeks before any personal skeletons in his closet start coming out to the media, ala Elliot Spitzer.
Who could have known that when you give people the power to set a benchmark lending rate and allow the same company to engage in business practices whose profit margins are effected by that benchmark that they would engage in deceptive practices to maximize profits?
House of the Dread 