Republicans Do the Banksters' Bidding, Not Yours

The Senate voted to repeal a rule limiting overdraft fees to $5.

All the Republicans, excpet for Runnin' Josh, voted to do that.

Because they have the backs of the bankers. Not of thier constituents.

Why Musk Went After the CFPB

He's setting up a deal with Visa so he can swindle the wet-brained on X.

Fucking Over the Customers for Fun and Profit is What American Corporations Do

Southwest Airlines is to allow customers to reserve seats, scrapping the free-for-all of unassigned seating it has operated for 50 years.

The company said it also planned to charge for "premium" seats with more leg room, add red-eye flights, and redesign its boarding system.

The announcements came as the firm reported that profits plunged in the April-June period to $367m, down 46% compared with last year.

Chief executive Bob Jordan said the seating changes would "unlock new sources of revenue".
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It had been known as a holdout in the industry for not hitting customers with extra fees for items such as checked baggage.

But its share price has dropped sharply over the last few years, as its profitability lags others in the industry.
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"Although our unique open seating model has been a part of Southwest Airlines since our inception... this is the right choice - at the right time - for our customers, our people, and our shareholders," Mr Jordan said.

Shares in the firm rose more than 6% after the announcement.

Let's be clear about it: Jordan doesn't give a rat's ass about the employees or the customers. It's all about the share price. It's all about raping the customers as hard as they can to maximize revenue and please Wall Street.

MBAs and banksters have ruined this country. They've wrecked Boeing, they've made the other airlines into flying shitshows and now they're coming for the last airline that actually gave a shit about its passengers.

If you can't drive to where you're going, I respectfully suggest that you stay the fuck home.

Reagan Fucked Up America's Defense Industry

Between "conservative" penchant for outsourcing core military procurement functions and MBA/banksters mania for mergers and shit like that there, our military-inducstrial base has been hollowed out.

Frankly, what they did is nothing short of economic sabotage. The USSR/Russia and China could not have done it better to us if they tried.

Milton Friedman and his doctrine of "shareholder value über alles" was to American industry what Thomas Midgely, Jr. was to the environment.

Of Course the Courts Protect the Rich

A federal judge in Texas temporarily halted a plan by the Biden administration to lower late fees on credit cards to $8 that was slated to go into effect next week.

The temporary nationwide injunction imposed by Judge Mark Pittman in the Northern District of Texas is a win for the big banks and major credit card companies, which collect billions in revenue each year in late fees and were looking to stop the proposal from going into effect. It is also a win for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which led the lawsuit on behalf of the banks.

No real shock that a judge that was appointed by the TOFF would side with the banksters against people. You can bet heavily that the Supremes will see it the same way, especially since some of them are owned by billionaires.

The Flimflam Game

Amid safety scandals involving "many loose bolts" and widespread problems with Boeing's 737 Max 9s, Boeing is apparently considering buying back Spirit AeroSystems, the key supplier behind some of Boeing's current manufacturing problems, sources told The Wall Street Journal.

Spirit was initially spun out from Boeing Commercial Airplanes in 2005, and Boeing had planned to keep it that way. Last year, Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun sought to dispel rumors that Boeing might reacquire Spirit as federal regulators launched investigations into both companies. But now Calhoun appears to be "softening that stance," the WSJ reported.

Whatever the pros and cons of this are for making airplanes, you can rest assured that there are people in both companies who are going to make a shitload of money from this. Because Boeing is a financial flimflam company that only happens to also make airplanes.

In a sane reality, there would be a bunch clowns from Wall Street doing the Tyburn Jig in Battery Park.

Spike This Shit

Capital One Financial is buying Discover Financial Services for $35 billion, in a deal that would bring together two of the nation’s biggest lenders and credit card issuers.

I have seen very few of these horizontal mergers of any stripe that benefit the American people. Such mergers end up with everyone paying more for whatever that industry produces. The only ones those mergers benefit are the vulture capitalists and the banksters, the same pack of economic saboteurs who have been ripping apart and devouring this country's economic base for decades.

If there is any regulatory input on this merger, the regulators should stomp on the proponents's dicks with golfing shoes. Figuratively, of course.

Because hanging them en masse in Battery Park would be wrong.

Cryptocurrency or Criminal-Currency?

The U.S. government dealt a massive blow to Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, which agreed to pay a roughly $4 billion settlement Tuesday as its founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to a felony related to his failure to prevent money laundering on the platform.

Zhao stepped down as the company’s chief executive and Binance admitted in the settlement to violations of the Bank Secrecy Act and apparent violations of sanctions programs, including failure to put into place suspicious transaction reporting programs.

Cryptocurrency seems to be more of a tool for crime than for serious investment.

A Swiss Slap on the Wrist for Putin's Moneymen

>Four bankers who allowed a friend of Vladimir Putin to deposit huge sums in Swiss banks have been found guilty of lacking due diligence.

The former executives at the Zurich branch of Russia's Gazprombank were given hefty fines for helping musician Sergei Roldugin, nicknamed "Putin's wallet".
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Three of the convicted bankers are Russian and one is Swiss. They were given fines totalling 741,000 Swiss francs (£655,600), suspended for two years.

The men, who cannot be identified under Swiss reporting restrictions, said they would appeal against the Swiss court's decision.

The Zurich court could not prove the four had doubts when the Russian musician turned up with millions of dollars. But the verdict says they should have, and failed to act.

No prison time and a financial slap on the wrists for those guys. I have little doubt that, if they keep their mouths shut, that the Russians will find some way to make them whole.

This case smells like the Swiss are tryint to show that they are doing something to shut down Putin's cash laundromat while substantively doing jack-point-shit.

I would like to be proven wrong. But let's be clear: When it comes to cash, the Swiss bankers are about as amoral as they come.

Betcher Ass That Those Banksters Are Not Doing This Out of the Goodness of Their Hearts

Large U.S. banks injected $30 billion in deposits into First Republic Bank (FRC.N) on Thursday, swooping in to rescue the lender caught up in a widening crisis triggered by the collapse of two other mid-size U.S. lenders over the past week.
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Some of the biggest U.S. banking names including JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N), Citigroup Inc (C.N), Bank of America Corp (BAC.N), Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N), Goldman Sachs (GS.N) and Morgan Stanley (MS.N) were involved in the rescue, according to a statement from the banks.

The deal was put together by power brokers including U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who discussed the package on Tuesday, according to a source familiar with the situation.

Goldman Sachs, in particular, would do nothing like that unless they saw a way to make obscenely huge amounts of money from it. They are about as close to a completely psychopathic nd amoral entity as exists in the world of banking, and that's saying quite a lot.

Here We Go Again (maybe)

U.S. regulators on Sunday shut down New York-based Signature Bank, a big lender in the crypto industry, in a bid to prevent the spreading banking crisis.

“We are also announcing a similar systemic risk exception for Signature Bank, New York, New York, which was closed today by its state chartering authority,” the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said in a joint statement Sunday evening.

That's the second bank to go belly-up in two days.

As I pointed out the other day, the bankster running Silicon Valley Bank worked very hard to ensure that there was little regulation of his bank. The banksters chafe at federal regulations, they throw money around Congress to get regulations cut, they wine/dine/pressure the regulators themselves, they tell everyone "trust us, we learned from the last series of failures" and then they walk really close to the edge of the fiscal cliff and some of them fall over. Which will cost the rest of us money to bail their asses out.

Haven't we seen this movie before? But with the Congress largely populated by millionaires, don't expect anything to change anytime soon.

Of Course He Did; Banksters Ed.

Eight years before the second-largest bank failure in American history occurred this week, the bank’s president personally pressed Congress to reduce scrutiny of his financial institution, citing the “low risk profile of our activities and business model”, according to federal records reviewed by the Lever.

Three years later – after the bank spent more than half a million dollars on federal lobbying – lawmakers obliged.

That lobbying including hosting fundraisers and paying bribes making campaign contributions to prominent politicians.

SVB's presdient, sold over three million dollars worth of his stock holdings in his bank just two weeks ago. Which seems mighty convenient.

Silicon Valley’s Slow Implosion

Regulators rushed Friday to seize the assets of one of Silicon Valley’s top banks, marking the largest failure of a U.S. financial institution since the height of the financial crisis almost 15 years ago.

Silicon Valley Bank, the nation’s 16th-largest bank, failed after depositors hurried to withdraw money this week amid anxiety over the bank’s health. It was the second biggest bank failure in U.S. history after the collapse of Washington Mutual in 2008.

The bank served mostly technology workers and venture capital-backed companies, including some of the industry’s best-known brands.

The problem is that a goodly number of tech businesses in Silicon Valley have their funds in that bank, to the tune of seven, eight, and nine-figure deposits. The FDIC only insures a quarter-million per depositor, so those companies' cash is frozen, if not partially gone. They'll have to wait for the forensic auditors to unravel things to see how much of their money they may get back. Which will take awhile.

In the meantime, those companies won't be able to pay their employees and their bills.

Things could get rather grim.

K-Mart, Murdered by the Vulture Capitalists

Those are the guys who take over struggling companies and, instead of revitalizing them, pump two rounds into the company's head and sell off the parts.

Or they sell off the parts and then kill the company. All so they can make a fast buck and fuck the employees and the places where the stores were.

The most recent casualty is K-Mart.

Don't worry, Wal-Mart. Some day, they will come for you, too.

Never Ever Link Payment to Someone to Your Bank Account

This is why: A half a million people had their bank accounts overdrawn by Nationstar Mortgage. Those fuckwads took out months' worth of payments in one go.

Their response was basicly "oops, computer error, our bad, sorry for the inconvenience."

Just what we all need in these difficult times, another reason to hate bankers.

Pandemic Profiteers: Bankster Ed.

As millions of Americans get thrown out of work during the pandemic, one group stand ready to make a killing: The Banksters.

This is why: When it comes time to making decisions on buying stuff during this crisis, more and more people are going to turn to their credit cards. The landlord isn't going to take plastic, but the grocery stores and the pharmacies will. Millions, if not tens of millions of people who would routinely pay off their credit card each month are now going to, out of necessity, run balances on them, The banks stand ready to reap massive profits from the pandemic.

Credit card rates are averaging 17-20%, with some cards into the mid-30s. During a time of crisis, this is nothing short of usury and profiteering.

I am not against the banks making a profit. but I am opposed to them making a killing on the backs of people during a global pandemic and its ensuing economic crisis.

So please, Gentle Readers, sit down at your keyboards and send off emails to your Senators and Congressmen. Ask them, for the love of Your Dear and Fluffy Lord, to step up and do something.

(Feel free to repost.)

Shorter U.S. Bank: "We'll Do the Right Thing When There Is No Other Option,"

Marc Eugenio had deposited a $1,080 paycheck into his account at U.S. Bank. The bank put a hold on most of the sum, and he spent many hours in a branch office over two days, trying to get access to the money so he could buy presents for his 9-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son.
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He telephoned the bank’s toll-free number and spoke with Emily James, a senior officer at a call center in Portland. She spent an hour on the phone with Eugenio, trying to get some money released so he could at least get home. She soon realized that he had been misled, and that money wouldn’t reach his account any time soon. Feeling bad for a customer stuck on Christmas Eve, James offered to drive over from her call center and personally hand him $20.

“No, no, no,” Eugenio told her. He couldn’t impose. But she suggested she could use her break, and she received permission from a supervisor to drive 20 minutes to Eugenio. She later recalled that when she arrived, she wished him Merry Christmas and handed him $20 of her own money.
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When U.S. Bank found out that it had such a generous employee, what did it do? It fired her.
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U.S. Bank’s vision statement boasts: “Our employees are empowered to do the right thing.” So I tried to ask the company’s C.E.O., Andrew Cecere, why the bank fired an employee who, with permission, rescued a frustrated customer on Christmas Eve.

Cecere wouldn’t return my calls.

Ah, but once the story went online, Cecere couldn't pick up his phone fast enough.

On Saturday evening, after this article went online, I had a contrite phone call from Andrew Cecere, the C.E.O. of U.S. Bank. “This is not who we are,” he said. He added that companies sometimes make mistakes, and that he accepted ownership of what went wrong.

I disagree with Cecere: That's exactly who they are.

Why the World Hates New York Bankers and Lawyers

If you have the time and stomach, you ought to read this article about how the banksters and the lawyers fucked over a lot of immigrants by selling them overpriced taxi medallions. It is a long read, but in short, the same usual suspects who brought down the economy in the Aughts are still hard at work.

We should have built and used guillotines the last time around. But Obama and Holder couldn't even be bothered to investigate those fuckers. Hell, Holder was one of them and, arguably, did his level best to ensure that few of the banksters, if any, were ever held accountable..

Citibank is Still Full of Weasels

Citibank, one of the banksters whose corrupt and unethical practices brought about the Great Recession and the Crash of 2008, is deciding that they are , oh, so ethical that they have to stick their noses into the gun debate.

I believe that I should be able to use any credit card to buy any lawful product. If the banksters of Citibank are having the vapors from making money over the firearms trade, I just wonder why they didn't have the vapors over tanking the economy and driving millions of people out of their homes.

Ah, Just Blame Hillary Clinton and Get It Over With

Remington Outdoor Company Inc, one of the largest U.S. makers of firearms, has reached out to banks and credit investment funds in search of financing that will allow it to file for bankruptcy, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

The vulture capitalists loaded Remington up with an unsustainable level of debt. But that's what they do, and they probably figured that record sales would continue under a Clinton45 administration, so they could get away with looting the company.

Which is what those sociopaths seem to always do.