Lord Acton said: “The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.”
I’d have to say, given the difficulty of borrowing money when one truly needs it and has ability to pay it back but NOT at usury rates… and practically have a loan be thrown at one, if one doesnt need it and thereby being given ‘the most favorable low rates’ even though one can well afford to pay more and… thereby justly lowering some of the highest rates offered to the poor who are working and able to pay back, but only at the same FAVORABLE rates given to those upperclass mawks…
I’d have to say, many banking officers appear to be playing a bunco game. And have been doing so for decades and decades. Except for many of us who have moved upward at least one economic class from the very bottom… we see the scam, we see it clearly, and denounce it utterly.
1. Oh Hello Mr. 47%, sit right down, certainly we have a car loan for you. It will cost you x% in interest, and we’ll make it easy for you, we’ll carry you for seven years on that loan, but you see, because you have little credit, from not taking out credit cards we’re going to have to add a percent or two to your loan basis, not because we dont trust you, but because you just dont have a high enough credit score, as you turned down our 9-30% interest on balance credit card. Just know if you are more than three days late in paying your monthly fee, there is a double surcharge and if you fall behind three months, we will strip you of anything you bought with this loan, and will STILL owe us the complete principal and interest and all penalties compounded.
2. Oh Hello Mr. 2%, have a whiskey here at the club with me. That loan, sure, how about interest only, 2% will be fine. We know you, and even though you have had three bankrupcies in the construction corps, we know that was just ‘the economy’ and besides we have all these other saps paying for the same kind of money at far more than we charge you, so no problem. Plenty of money for you and for us, and by the way thanks for paying off your credit card every month, so as to avoid that 9-30% per month on the balance. You are one smart cookie and have followed all the advice my banking planner VP has given you. Oh, by the way, we are taking our VIP customers to the NFL game and here are three box tickets for you and your family, come join us, we’ll have a great time.
Rather than waiting for certain salaciously greed-rotted financial officers to stop cannibalizing the needy… I think one of the solutions is to make certain that everyone of Romney’s putative 47% knows what those with far better connections are receiving for loans, interest rates, cd rates, investments… including write offs. That this all be made completely transparent.
That’s not going to come from the bankers/ investmentors. It’s got to come from the citizens who have the insights and those who have been burned in a two tier complicit banking system that is unjust. And just saying: there are two different banking systems and both complicit in keeping the poorer people, poor… and bankers doling out the feast for buddies and/or those they really really ‘like’ for reasons that often have nothing to do with viability of character.
It reminds me of the two hugely different Catholic churches that for years were kept a secret from the poor.
1.
In the church of the poor in our immigrant community when I was a child, the priests told us our reward was in heaven and to just work hard, bend to the yoke on earth, submit to the injustices, the greed of others, the preposterous opportunism by the wealthy through their unfair treatment of the poor working class… and dont worry about anything, the meek shall inherit the earth, the first shall be last in heaven, that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to reach heaven and other purposely prevaricating pusillanimous posolé.
2.
Then, when I was an adult, and managed to, through hard hardship, pull down a college degree and moved to a safe neighborhood and went to a catholic church where there were middle and upper middle class parishioners, I was amazed to hear the gospel of prosperity and dominance on earth by those who were ‘fit for the Lord’s work’ and dominion over others, including human beings, land and animals, for wasnt that what G0d said in Genesis after all, and we were to go out and build and destroy and create and be prosperous in every way.
Banking is like that too. It is a for-profit temple with many a priesthood who preach and distribute as episcopo unevenly and with egotistical favoritism… one offering of services for the poor that pretends to give, but at high costs, and often pitiful offerings… and another set of services for the better off, who are invited to every conceivable feast and lauded and given position. And the latter day well-off may or may NOT ever not pay back into, in full, even at the widow’s mite rates given them… when if fact the better off are far far far from being needful widows.
Expose this two tier unjust system of domestic banking that attempts to act as a moral judge of character in terms of loanability, but then turns to give loans and significant perks to those who have failed on a colossal scale, regardless.
Another time, some comments on the pilfering, privileged way of ‘banking’ offshore in order to avoid paying taxes in the USA. But just to say here: I would be amazed to NOT find Mitt Romney’s tax returns rotten with such.
Some crave banking massive amounts offshore as in Belize, and as in Swiss banks, this beingone more way to rob the US government of assets that could be used to decline the deficit, that could be used to repair infrastructure, that could be used to help the truly vulnerable. But no. Keeping one’s lucre offshore while others ‘slave and pay’… well, it’s Lord Acton who also said that famous line… power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. He meant that without close and consistent oversight, high penalties for veering from just law, by allowing immunity and impunity in unjust affairs, and by deeming ‘higher ups’ not accountable for they are such ‘great guys’ will cause a family, a nation, a world to sink to the lowest slime of ‘look the other way crimes against the people’ …thinking ‘the people’ to be expendable and only worthy of working like mules.
NO patriotism accorded to those who bank offshore in order to not pay taxes to their own nation so their nation can be lifted up. None who do so can be called a patriot to this country. They choose to enrich foreign countries and their own counting houses, their own silk lined pockets instead of assisting their own country and meaning it. There is no honor to that, nor to those in finance and banking, securities or other ‘products’ who give steep financial opportunity and favor to one group and no equal opportunity and favor to others.
Given what bankers did with bail out money (that came from ALL of us) in granting themselves millions of dollars in ‘bonuses’ for essentially screwing up our nation and not being honest in their stacking bad and decent mortgages and then selling them here and abroad causing the greatest decline and crises in nations since the late 1920s’ and early 1930s.
Having witnessed in person some of the ‘former’ con men’s arrogance and continued reception by others in the GOP and Dem parties… it is not just us who dont seem to want to remain alert and awake… it is the pretenders to all the throne rooms worldwide who are sluggish beyond sluggish to demand reparation from the bankers/ security/mortgage/ lenders/ brokers to pay back the citizens’ moneies and/or go to prison for fraud, grand larceny…
those able to bring the prevaricators to the dock, appear they would like to remain asleep also, in fear perhaps, that they have been complicit… and wanting the feast to continue for themselves…it appears that ‘the feast and clubbing’ and ‘retirement’ must go on, no matter how others suffer on the outside looking in.
There’s nothing ‘patriotic’ about that.