I wonder how many of you out there have experienced what I have just experienced with my bank, (I am sure it is too numerous to count). I had a check come through for $450 and several small debit transactions for items such as gas and food and one for a drug store all on the same day, just one day shy of my usual $350 direct deposit from work on Friday. The bank cleared the large check first and then paid all 5 other small debit transactions but not without hitting me up with 6 overdraft fees of $36 each. When I called the bank, I was made to feel like I was an idiot and a bad money manager and when the bank did credit 4 of the 6 overdraft fees, they made it quite clear to me that they were being MORE THAN GENEROUS. More than generous! WOW, they just got $700 billion from Congress and they could not even credit me one more fee of just $36! That simple credit of $36 would have saved me.........I needed that money for gas and food for the week until I got paid again. I am sure many of you out there have gone through this very thing.
And what has Congress done to regulate such clever banking practices.............absolutely NOTHING, as usual! Between 20 and 40 million Americans do not have a bank account.......not because they do not have the money or that they have bad credit, but because they simply do not have ENOUGH money to avoid all these deceptive fees and TRAPS! Many banks authorize debit cards over their limit, then slap insufficient-funds fees when the transactions put the customers account into the red. These banks computers are PROGRAMMED to clear the largest checks first, so if an account is overdrawn, it is overdrawn multiple times rather than only once. This, of course, means multiple fees, which have risen from $10-$15 to $30-$45 over the past decade. Banks have made millions of dollars from these fees, perhaps even billions and its irresistible to them to make more profit even if its unethical and immoral. Though it seems hard to believe, pawnshops are more heavily regulated than the banks-and ofter cheaper. Pawns have to charge a uniform, capped interest rate with no special penalties. The rate schedule must be printed in full view of customers and there are no additional fees. Banks used to be bound by the same kinds of laws that now protect alternative customers, but now they can charge whatever interest rates they determine necessary and whatever fees they consider fair- these remarkable and unprecedented freedoms, COURTESY of the United States Supreme Court.
This is America right, so by god, let freedom ring! At least that was the sentiment of the banks. They should be allowed to do whatever they want. Walter Wriston, the brainchild of Citigroup Center, succeeded in demolishing the laws restricting credit, laws that had been designed to protect both the banking industry as well as the consumer. The financial industryès record of legislative and judical victories since Wriston began his crusade is simply too impressive to list in full. Sadly, in 2004, while we watched record foreclosures, defaults and bankruptcies higher than the Great Depression, President Bush awarded Wriston the Presidental Medal of Freedom!
Because this is not the first time this has happened to me, I will tell you, it will be the last because I no longer have faith in the banking industry, nor do I have confidence in the bank having any barometer for moral behavior because it is through and through corrupt like cancer destroying all the good cells in the body (even Washington is aware of this and they see the banking industry on the verge of nationalization). The number of millionaires hit an all-time high in 2005, even as foreclosures and defaults kept on rising. Bank profits and credit card company profits are exploding while their customers savings disappear. We talk of ownership in this society, yet ownership society is nothing more than a red herring as quoted by Warren Buffet. He says what we are creating IS a society of sharecroppers, not owners. Neither the mind-set nor the statistics inspire much hope that the DISPARITIES in wealth created over the past generation-the greatest since the 1930s-will get better before they get worse.
All over the country, we are voting to put ourselves deeper into debt in order to have trophy-like skyscrapers and sports stadiums that will be owned by billionaires who did not pay for them. Colleges and universities are cutting deals with credit card companies and still forcing students to mortgage their futures in order to boast of winning football teams and gourmet food services. The IMF (International Monetary Fund) warned that profligate spending was not only destabilizing the world economy but pissing everybody off! All the elements for a revolution are now in place as this country is looking more and more like a third world country. In fact, it already is. All it would take is for communist China and India to stop loaning us money because they feel we could not pay it back. Still our government chooses to take the money from the Arabs and the Chinese while they still want to give it to us and to do it while they can before the money vanishes as magically as it appeared. China, India and the Arabs own this country, yet we continue to boast of our $14 trillion economy, all the while sinking deeper and deeper in the abyss of debt. Curtailing spending is a good thing. Having the banks freeze credit is a good thing. People will begin to save and understand the extremely fragile state of the world economy that can tank, not even with a moments notice. Consider when banks loan money to nations around the world, particularly poor nations, to pay off old debts. Liabilities must be piled on top of the original debt in order to avoid default. Eventually the amount of cash needed to pay off old debts plus the new debts become such a burden that the whole thing collapses beneath its own weight........except of course if you have a large printing press in your back room, which we all know as the U.S. Treasury.
The financial industry spends vast amounts of money spreading the myth that banking is good, debt is good, that what matters is a good credit score and a low interest rate, APPROVAL, as though that approval still means what it did a generation ago when denial was the norm. That it is more important to take that carribean cruise than it is to take care of your financial future. That doing without is immoral and that debt is actually freedom......if you can believe that. That wealth is spending, not saving (i.e. United States Government), and that there will always be more credit, as long as you remain of the preferred-customer list. This propaganda is being spread every second of the day and this taste for credit is being cultivated into a voracious appetite among those who can least afford it. There have been no checks and balances over these such abuses of power and no laws have been passed to protect consumers from these abuses.
How is it that we see record profits in corporate America and large banks, yet see the SO MANY poor people in this country. Is it not because these corporations and banks are so damn greedy that they can not even spare a dime or show mercy to someone about to foreclose or default. The emergence of a class structure is nowhere more evident than in the differential in pay of corporate CEOs and average workers. CEOs have always been paid better that the average employee in this country, but over the past decade the disparity between the two has become even more wide. Median CEO compensation went from $1.8 million in 1992 to $6.1 million in 2000. CEO pay increased 340 percent from 1992 to 2002, while compensation pay for rank and file employees increased a mere 36 percent. By 2004, the average CEO pay was $9.6 million, with one hundred CEOs making more than $10 million and forty making more than $20 million. In 2005, the median pay for CEOs in the one hundred largest U.S. companies increased to $17.9 million- an increase of 25% from the year before. The average employee got a raise of just 3.1 percent during the same time period.
Perhaps I have gone off focus from the original title of this post but nevertheless, all things related, they come full circle. You can not have greedy deceitful banks without having records defaults and home foreclosures and you can not have enormous profits without a large disparity between the rich and the poor........someone, and that someone is you and me, is contributing to these enormous profits and billion dollar pay checks for CEOs. Just because I am a Born-Again believer is Jesus Christ and I have full confidence in His Sovereignty over this injustice, greed and deceit of these banks and corporations, does not mean I should not stand up for righteousness and speak of justice. We are called to justice, just as we are called to righteousness and standing up for the poor and those who are powerless is an act of justice.
Ecclesiastes 5:8
If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent preverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter; for he that is higher than the highest regardeth; and there be higher than they. AMEN