Call to Action: Bust the Super-bank Monopolies
If your life is going well, and nothing is really wrong around you, then, you needn’t read any further. But if you are like me who see at times gradual, at times steep social and political decline which lessen people’s ability to live, then, join me in taking action; read on; take action and pass it on.
I held this letter back for several weeks to watch for further signs; I probably shouldn’t have. While Wall Street wallows in TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program) money, Main Street continues to struggle, lose jobs, and companies that haven’t closed down are operating on survival mode.
Despite the eloquence and the humanitarian and progressive speeches from the President, and all the support and positive press, the administration can’t seem to control the financial community (or doesn’t want to). TARP has been completely spent, and huge sums of it can’t be accounted for. (But they’re sure showing up as profits in their publicly released projections!) The Fed and banks have refused to detail amounts and how it was used; despite the presidential outrage at the bonuses, he still allowed a $500,000 cap. The excuse: reward productivity. They changed the meaning: Productivity should translate into benefit on behalf of the people served, not themselves and their corporations at the expense of the public. When they lost millions for the entire population how dare they call it productivity?
It is theft. The public stands firm: No bonuses. The financial community is an integral part of the disbursement of ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act). They will earn billions in contract fee for “managing and distributing the money” in compliance with ARRA. But we expect they will make it difficult, if not impossible, and they’ve already got included the necessary loopholes into the ARRA law, to reap the maximum advantage possible, plus any additional perks that can be slushed through their obscure accounting systems.
Take the “affordable housing” feature, where anyone stressed out to keep up with their mortgages, should be able to refinance down to around 4%, no fees. It’s one of the greatest things for the economy. Go to your local HUD office, and find out how in effect, most people do not qualify. More than 50% of home owners are already disqualified regardless of personal situation, if their mortgages aren’t owned by Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae. Next, you need to be one month behind in payments to qualify. If you go past one month behind, you can’t qualify. Since I wrote this draft, they put up an expansion to the program to extend to people whose mortgages aren’t owned by Freddie and Fannie; I haven’t followed up to see whether it really works at this time; but history tends to repeat itself, particularly if it is the same people who did it before.
Where is the money to put people back to work in companies that have had to close because banks refused to make loans or renew their revolving credit? Business owners I’ve talked to have scaled their operations way back, and fear their inability to last another year and a half.
A recent law was passed to prevent abuses against credit card holders, where extra fees, and larger monthly minimum, and interest increases were put on people without notice, and without recourse. The law doesn’t become effective for another year… so the credit card companies can continue to fleece the public for yet another year.
And it goes on and on. All you need to do is test any of the projects and try to see if you can benefit from any of the wonderful programs. The financial community will benefit.
Whether the Administration can’t or doesn’t want to; therefore, they need public encouragement as expressed by the action through their money.
Action objective: To force the 4 Major Banks, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, and Chase, to break up into independent community banks.
1. 1. Forward this letter only to known friends to avoid getting this letter going into spam boxes. Also, send it out within two days. If it goes down to 9 layers at 5 letters each person, and no breaks in the network, the network will build up to about 2 million at the 9th level. Assume breaks of 50%, so it should take some 100 people at the top level to eventually reach about 50% of the population, and if only half actually do the next steps, it maybe large enough numbers to force the break up.
2. There are many people who don’t yet have email accounts. These should be notified verbally. Tell your friends.
3. 2. Take all financial assets, checking and savings accounts you have in any of the above banks. Don’t close the accounts, keep enough to last a month or two in services charges, and ask for paper statements. (There maybe a cost in withdrawing certain types of accounts. We don’t want people to lose money in the process, so decide what you can endure losing.)
4. 3. Move it to local-community banks. Do check the community bank to ensure it is not owned by a huge Super-bank.
Talk about doing this has been circulating on line, for about a month. I think this is a way to help implement. If every one that participates sends his within two days, and take action by late, we should see enough numbers to see some reaction. What can happen? If tens of millions move their funds the super-banks will feel it, and the results are likely to make the mainstream media. If nothing is heard, the action was inadequate or the network didn’t reach its goals due to breakdown. In either case, future action can be better planned.
Well honed in this method of action should get more immediate action from any administration or Congress. The result of this initial action will help better organized future “vote with your money” protests which WILL produce real change. The people must be heard.
May 10th, 2009 by NickP | No Comments »