{"id":184442,"date":"2012-04-28T20:10:00","date_gmt":"2012-04-29T01:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/04\/28\/not-enough-bullets-48\/"},"modified":"2012-04-28T20:10:00","modified_gmt":"2012-04-29T01:10:00","slug":"not-enough-bullets-48","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/04\/28\/not-enough-bullets-48\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Enough Bullets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The banksters have discovered another way to pay their obscene levels of executive pay, they <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/04\/26\/business\/chasing-fees-banks-court-low-income-customers.html\">push poor customers to high fee products<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: blue;\"><p>An increasing number of the nation\u2019s large banks \u2014 U.S. Bank, Regions Financial and Wells Fargo among them \u2014 are aggressively courting low-income customers like Mr. Wegner with alternative products that can carry high fees. They are rapidly expanding these offerings partly because the products were largely untouched by recent financial regulations, and also to recoup the billions in lost income from recent limits on debit and credit card fees.<\/p>\n<p>Banks say that they are offering a valuable service for customers who might not otherwise have access to traditional banking and that they can offer these products at competitive prices. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a new federal agency, said it was examining whether banks ran afoul of consumer protection laws in the marketing of these products.<\/p>\n<p>In the push for these customers, banks often have an advantage over payday loan companies and other storefront lenders because, even though banks are regulated, they typically are not subject to interest rate limits on payday loans and other alternative products.<\/p>\n<p>Some federal regulators and consumer advocates are concerned that banks may also be steering people at the lowest end of the economic ladder into relatively expensive products when lower-cost options exist at the banks or elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is a disquieting development for poor customers,\u201d said Mark T. Williams, a former Federal Reserve Bank examiner. \u201cThey are getting pushed into high-fee options.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe look at alternative financial products offered by both banks and nonbanks through the same lens \u2014 what is the risk posed to consumers?\u201d said Richard Cordray, director of the bureau. \u201cPractices that make it hard for consumers to anticipate and avoid costly fees would be cause for concern.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Seriously, we should have tarred and feathered these f%$#s, not bailed them out.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s hoping that the CFPB takes a look at this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The banksters have discovered another way to pay their obscene levels of executive pay, they push poor customers to high fee products: An increasing number of the nation\u2019s large banks \u2014 U.S. Bank, Regions Financial and Wells Fargo among them \u2014 are aggressively courting low-income customers like Mr. Wegner with alternative products that can carry &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,969,1004],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-evil","category-finance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184442"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184442\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}