Hollering about "fairness," Democrats vowed to punish U.S. banks by passing new laws to micromanage their businesses. As a result, free checking may soon be dead. So who's really paying for all that "fairness"?
Bank of America and other big banks plan to charge monthly "maintenance fees" on checking accounts, according to the Wall Street Journal, due to a spate of recent new congressional regulations on banks.
It's not surprising, given the extent of do-gooderism in Congress, which has insisted it knows better than banks themselves how to run their businesses and treat their customers.
Acting from what they imagine are the interests of the little guy, their recent legislative moves -- as well as others on the way -- have effectively halted how banks charge overdraft fees on consumers who bounce checks and how interest rates are calculated on high-risk credit cards.
What they didn't pay any attention to was the fact that those fees enabled banks to offset the $300 or so it costs to maintain each checking account at a bank.
So now everyone pays to replace what had otherwise been penalty-based income on the individual acts of an irresponsible few. Previously, consumers could control their fees based on how well they managed their checkbooks. The better they managed, the less they paid. Now, they'll just pay, whether they're responsible or not.
Call it the socialization of fees.
The infuriating thing is that in recent years, Democrats really thought they could just wave a legislative wand to end all fees from banks and create a Better World. They assumed bank fees are purely a function of banker malice and greed, and that only their legislative heroism could stop it.
In reality, banks are businesses and like other businesses, must balance their books and make a profit. The one instrument they control is the price of the service they provide.
As prices go up to cover Congress' newly imposed regulatory costs, expect the poorest people to drop out of the banking system.
They'll be driven from banks back to inner-city check cashing outfits and hide their cash under their mattresses -- and attract crime.
It's exactly the fact that poor people were underbanked and dependent on a cash economy that prompted other irresponsible legislative measures, like the Community Reinvestment Act of the 1990s. The CRA forced banks to make home loans to poor people who might have been better served by access to free checking.
In the end, we'll all pay for Congress' foolish desire to micromanage our banking system. Maybe voters in November will pick a Congress that can undo this mess. We certainly hope so.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/19/2010 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Last time i looked banks were PROFITING Billions from these "Fees" that makes the article a damn lie the banks wil NOT need other "Fees" to break even, but they will to continue to pay their executives Multi Million dollar salaries.
That can stop easily, the Banks are feeding Greed, NOT Need.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
06/19/2010 0:24 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Back before ATMs, banks had human tellers who did the transactions for about 6 hours a day, four days a week, and then a split, 3 early + 3 late, on Friday. Then this ATM thingy showed up and the banks started to install them as a "cost savings" measure that off set the expense of paying a human a salary and overhead (health, unemployment, social security, etc). Some how a couple years later that "cost savings" got padded with use charges.
Now that the competition has been cut down and the behemoths that have been granted the graces of their rotating employees in the Fed/Tres, they now feel confident enough to float their profits on more 'charges'. Meanwhile the Fed is loaning the biggies at around zero interest while they buy Treasury bonds at a couple percentages above that.
#5
The Feds should re-instate the old US Postal Savings System, which ended in 1967. It used to pay 2% on deposits. They would certainly get my business. The big banks would really squeal like the pigs they are if that happened.
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/19/2010 16:04 Comments ||
Top||
#9
Yeah, my Credit Union charges no fees as long as I have about 300 dollars in either checking or savings. The fact that they don't advertise on the Super Bowl or sponsor prestigious athletic events or make crappy ass loans to welfare recipients may have something to with not only their business practices but their solvency, as well.
The raw fact is, it was a shakedown, regardless of the fact that Barton was bullied into retracting his statement. B.O. blatantly demanded money that he could hand out from BP or they would face consequences. It was the action of a seedy politician, not an act of leadership. It did zip to clear up the oil spill.
BP is on the hook to pay for cleanup efforts and they're on the hook to compensate people they've damaged economically. B.O.'s actually made it harder to get anything over that $20B amount, since that was what he was willing to settle for. And they call this guy "brilliant."
The Publican leadership shows itself yet again as being spineless and unprincipled. With them still in place, we can count on them, should the Publicans take back the House in November, bending over backward to "govern from the center," which translates into indulging their Dem colleagues and any mainstream press that hasn't gone out of business by then.
Representative Joe L. Barton had to be truly sorry by the time he apologized for his apology on Thursday.
In the four hours between his televised apology to BP -- for what he called a $20 billion "shakedown" by President Obama for loss claims in the gulf oil spill -- and his apology for that apology, Mr. Barton, a Republican from Texas, had been pummeled in the blogosphere, assailed by Democratic Party operatives and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and, in the blow that landed, threatened by Republican leaders with being yanked from the party's top seat on the powerful House energy committee.
By day's end, the Barton sideshow had become the main show in Congress, eclipsing the much-anticipated grilling of BP's chief executive, Tony Hayward, by members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
"I'm ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday," Mr. Barton said in his opening statement. "I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown -- in this case a $20 billion shakedown."
Democrats, smelling blood in an election year, sought to make Mr. Barton an exemplar for Republican ties to "Big Oil." House Republican leaders, fearing that trap, rushed to contain the damage.
Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, and Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the Republican whip, summoned Mr. Barton and he "was told to apologize, immediately, or he would lose his spot, immediately," a senior aide said. "We'll see what happens going forward."
When Mr. Barton soon did issue a statement of contrition, Mr. Boehner's office also distributed it, for added effect. Then Mr. Boehner, Mr. Cantor and another party leader, Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, together publicly rebuked their colleague.
Mr. Barton, in his statement, apologized "for using the term 'shakedown' " to describe the $20 billion escrow account that BP and the White House announced Wednesday. He also retracted the apology to BP and said the company "should bear the full financial responsibility for the accident on their lease in the Gulf of Mexico" on April 20 and "fully compensate those families and businesses that have been hurt."
Posted by: Fred ||
06/19/2010 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
"Shakedown" seems exactly the right word here, want to bet how much winds up in the Democrats coffers and how much (If Any) goes to the affected people.
My bet is zero.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
06/19/2010 0:17 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Now, now, RJ. Most of it will be spend on people---who vote the right ticket. As to the rest, don't muzzle the ox, etc...
#3
Barton is guilty of bad optics. Boehner, Pense and Cantor are guilty of failure of imagination to find a way to make the legitimate point in a politically palatable manner.
#5
It is going to be an interesting Congress next year when the Tea Partiers arrive. A lot of them like to tell it as it is also. It would be interesting to know what Chris Christie thought about this.
#6
Few could deny the PERCEPTION of strong arming or "insurance" against future DoJ actions certainly exists. Why must we permit negative perceptions when they could have been so easily avoided? I'm frankly bored of snooker.
If you think $50,000 doesn't buy what it used to, think again. For that rough sum, a professor at UCLA has agreed to draw up a report that proves opponents of the Democrats' health-care bill aren't motivated by a sense of fiscal responsibility or a general distrust of back-room deals, but by race.
The kicker? Taxpayers are funding the study.
According to the study's abstract, provided by the National Science Foundation, a government agency under the control of the executive branch: "This research project attempts to provide further evidence for this Obama-induced racialization by pinpointing the extent that health-care opinions are influenced by racial attitudes and determining Obama's causal role in racializing public opinion about a policy that has no manifest racial content."
David Sears, a professor of psychology at UCLA, was awarded $52,034 in January 2010 to make this case for the National Science Foundation. The tautology he sets forth in his abstract is rather complicated, so let's break it down: The project will seek to provide more evidence that opponents to health care are irrational because their negative opinions of health care "are influenced by racial attitudes," even though the health-care bill has nothing to do with race.
Shorter version: Opposition stems from Obama's pigmentation, not his policies.
"Race is probably the most visceral issue in American public life," Sears asserted in the proposal he submitted to the NSF. "As such, increased polarization of the electorate along the lines of racial attitudes would likely make the contemporary political discourse even more vitriolic than the already rancorous atmospheres under Presidents Clinton and Bush. Such a racialized environment would potentially make it more difficult to achieve common ground on public policy in the Age of Obama."
Generally, said NSF spokesperson Bobbie Mixon, all proposals go through the same rigorous selection process. "All the awards are pretty much based on the same general criteria, which is the merit of the proposal. When researchers send in their proposals, they are reviewed by a group of their peers. They compete against other awards." But Sears's award is part of NSF's RAPID program, which is intended for projects that are more immediate in nature. Because of the time-sensitive nature of RAPID projects, those being considered for RAPID grants bypass the peer review process and are hand-chosen by NSF employees. In this case, by Brian D. Humes of the Division of Social and Economic Sciences, who "looked in-house for recommendations from the staff." (Hume referred all requests for comment to Mixon's office.)
"RAPID awards can be on any topic, and they can take a number of different forms. We have issued quite a few of these RAPID awards based on the Gulf Coast oil spill. There's a timeliness involved with issuing a RAPID award." Mixon also said that RAPID awards were not decided based on politics, but simply on the merit of the science.
This isn't the first time that an agency under Obama has paid a professor to advocate for health care. Earlier this year, progressives took MIT's Jonathan Gruber behind the shed and gave him a sound whooping for failing to disclose that while he was acting as a source for stories and a congressional witness, he was also on the HHS' payroll, working to justify the Senate's version of the health-care bill, which had theretofore met with intense opposition from House Dems and grassroots progressives.
Nor is this Sears's first foray into attacking opponents of progressive policies. In 1997, he reviewed Byron M. Roth's "Is it really racism?: The origins of white Americans' opposition to race-targeted policies," for the academic journal Political Psychology. Roth, a sociologist, argued in his piece that criticisms of entitlement programs and affirmative action were often motivated by real concerns about spending run amok and social engineering, and that sociologists often falsely labeled such objections as racist in nature. In his review of Roth's book, Sears dismissed his peer as "naive" and oblivious to the realities of racism. Sears did not return requests for comment.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/19/2010 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Great. Is there any segment of society the left will not politicize to glean the last bit of power and control? Is the scientific method now just a tool of the oppressor dead white man bogeyman to be replaced by that black scum found in the toilet bowl false inquiry, scientific socialism?
Say hello to my little friend Trofim Lysenko. Can you say too stupid to live?
Posted by: ed ||
06/19/2010 8:08 Comments ||
Top||
#4
a professor at UCLA has agreed to draw up a report that proves opponents of the Democrats' health-care bill aren't motivated by a sense of fiscal responsibility or a general distrust of back-room deals, but by race.
There's a paragon of scientific objectivity (SARC). Another glaring example of the politicization of science. And then there is the global warming fiasco, (also see sham, scam, fraud, hornswoggle, swindle, rook, diddle the taxpayer/voter, con the gullible).
#5
Under Obama, the media, the unions, and Hollywood are doing a excellent job of completely discrediting themselves. Looks like academia is going to participate as well.
#6
A couple of this opportunist's current research interests:
1. Racism in politics. A number of projects continue my interest in the origins and effects of a "new,"post-civil-rights era, racism in politics, which we describe as "symbolic racism." It is the most common and most politically powerful form of racism in American politics today. We also have pursued the idea of black exceptionalism," that white Americans treat Latinos and Asian Americans more like the European immigrants of a century ago than like African Americans, who continue to face a relatively impermeable color line.
2. Southern realignment to the Republican party. A related line of research investigates the long-term continuities of racial politics in the South. In particular it examines the role of white racism, based in a long history of racial antagonism in the South, and today embedded in Christian fundamentalism, as a force that has successfully moved many white Southerners to the Republican party.
#7
And the NSF told us we could not make a device like we proposed to sell for less than $30,000 even though in the proposal we show one we built and successfully tested in Honduras for about $300 total. Showed the successful result too..
The same day we got the NSF rejection we got a standing ovation for our work at an international conference in Spain.
As the leader of our group said.. we don't need the NSF. We have lots of science.
We need a National Engineering Foundation to find practical, profitable uses for all the science we already have.
#8
Thats funny, cuz I was about to determine all government money study participants are homophones.
The real scientists, who seemingly tend to be quiet or shouted out, need to start defending themselves or else be taken over by the carpetbaggers. This logic and critical thinking branch is quite honestly under heavy assault from the superstitious peddlers and chicken littles of the world.
#9
Shorter version: Opposition stems from Obama's pigmentation, not his policies.
This is the same tired Ipso Facto argument liberal Indentity Politics has always been based on. The method is simple. The presenter will cite statistics and then intentionally confuse class, culture, and race to obtain a desired conclusion. It may go something like this. More people of color, per capita, support socialized health care then whites. More legislators of color, per capita, support socialized health care then whites legislators. There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that polar racial attitudes have slightly increased since Obama has been elected. Conclusion; opponents of socialized health care a are influenced by racial attitudes.
Of course, reality suggests more people of color, per capita, are in the economic class that will reap the most benefits at the least cost for socialized health care. And therefore that demographic is more inclined to support such legislation. And, not surprising, more legislators of color represent districts that have larger populations of minorities in that economic class. Also, not surprising, those legislators would advocate on behalf of their constituents attitudes. Whereas, conservative white legislators from wealthier districts would oppose such legislation on simmilar grounds. Finally, polar racial attitudes, by definition, means opposite attitudes in both directions.
It would be nice to see more blance here but as most politicians realize...you motivate by emotion.
#10
Geez it's getting to be embarassing to be a professor. I wish my peers would just shut up more often. Yesterday I read something about a Literature prof at U Guelph theorizing that the fictional Anne of Green Gables (she's the main character in a 'classic' Canadian novel) must have been a 'victim' of fetal alcohol syndrome. Now this craopla from this guy...
PHOENIX (AP) - Attorney General Terry Goddard says Friday that his office plans to withdraw as the state's lawyers in legal challenges to Arizona's new immigration law.
That leaves Gov. Jan Brewer's attorneys to defend the law on the state's behalf.
The Republican governor and Democratic attorney general were in a dispute over whether Goddard should defend the state. Both are gubernatorial candidates.
CNN has confirmed that Obama Administration lawyers are planning to file a legal challenge to the controversial Arizona immigration law sometime in the next month, according to a senior administration official.
However, the Department of Justice will still not confirm the claim and insists they are reviewing tha law. Federal government lawyers who have been working on the law challenge will most likely file their arguments in Federal Phoenix Court in the days leading up to July 28th when the law is scheduled to take effect the official said.
#5
IIRC the law itself allowed for the Gov to hire outside Counsel since the Legis knew the AG would either deliberately f*ck it up or refuse to defend. He's not declining, he's getting kicked off the case. Oh, and he's the Dem candidate for Gov this fall. Terry's toast
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/19/2010 11:29 Comments ||
Top||
#6
Gov. Brewer's statement yesterday: "Because Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced on Ecuadorean television on June 8th that the Obama Administration had decided to sue Arizona over its recently passed anti-illegal immigration law, SB1070, it will come as no surprise if recent media reports are accurate and if the president's policies now, in fact, include filing a lawsuit against the State of Arizona.
Though not surprising, that decision is, nevertheless, outrageous.
Our federal government should be using its legal resources to fight illegal immigration, not the law-abiding citizens of Arizona. Despite the law's rigorous safeguards against racial profiling and carefully crafted language to avoid usurping federal authority, several lawsuits have already been filed.
Because the Arizona Legislature had no confidence that the Attorney General would vigorously defend this legislation, subsequently giving me the authority to hire outside counsel - and because the Attorney General has now withdrawn as counsel for the State -- I will ensure the immigration laws we passed are vigorously defended all the way to the United States Supreme Court if necessary, where this reasonable law will ultimately be found constitutional."
#7
Neo-Nazis recruiting border enforcers south of I-8: From the please-let-this-be-a-joke-but-it's-not file, we have an e-mail from a known Neo-Nazi inviting folks to come to the Arizona desert to play paramilitary, urging them to "bring plenty of firearms and ammo" and "stand the line" in the desert against "armed narco-terrorists." Pinal [County AZ] Sheriff Paul Babeau, who was the one who described the desert area as being under the control of drug cartels, had this response, according to McCombs:
"Though I appreciate their support and offer to take up arms and patrol, this would not be helpful and would only cause a strain on already strained resources and their safety needs to be a priority. I do not ask or encourage them to come here.
"Securing our international border and fighting these heavily armed smugglers is the responsibility of the federal government.
"Local law enforcement can't handle this on our own, yet it will only complicate our concerns to have untrained and armed citizens, who are not from Pinal County - patrolling our desert areas. We currently have operations that are ongoing and advised [them] to not take law enforcement matter into their own hands."
#8
In an earlier news item which was ignored by the national media, the Pinal County Sheriff admitted the narcotraficantes control part of his county. The sheriff admits the cartels are operating in his county and without the federal government's help they can't get control. KGUN 9 News asked Babeu flat out if cartels control parts of Arizona.
"Absolutely, they have in terms of the remote areas in the drug corridors in the desert here in west Pinal County. Our government has even erected signs warning citizens to beware this is a known drug corridor," Babeu said.
When the 911 call came in deputies immediately started a search but found the two bodies shot to death after four hours of looking. In lieu of this violence Babeu is asking president Barack Obama to send 3000 National Guard troops to the border to help stop it.
"We can't patrol not only these remote areas, we have a hard enough time just responding to our emergencies,"
#10
This is undoubtedly the most glaring, in-your-face piece of evidence that the federal government has NO intention of EVER securing our southern border from invasion/attack. If ever there could be another civil war in the U.S. (God Forbid) this could be it.
#11
This POs AG should be filing law suit after law suit against the federal government, lets say first for environmentasl damages to the desert. Second for actively endangering the lives of Americans, third, for the revinue spent doing the feds job on the border, and on and on and on.... If Hillary wins, then the feds will have to lose.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
06/19/2010 19:27 Comments ||
Top||
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
