Investors are well aware that money markets pay next to nothing in interest these days. Now one bank has announced a policy to actually charge clients a fee to hold their cash. The policy by Bank of New York Mellon Corp. will apply to some large depositors to hold their cash, reports the Wall Street Journal.

In a letter reviewed by WSJ, Mellon advised that it will charge 0.13% plus an additional fee if the one-month Treasury yield dips below zero on depositors that have accounts with an average monthly balance of $50 million “per client relationship.”

“In the past month, we have seen a growing level of deposits on our balance sheet from clients seeking a safe-haven in light of the global interest rate and credit environment,” the bank told the Journal in an emailed statement.

More: CBS News

Wall Street pay is on pace to break a record high for a second consecutive year, according to a report in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal.

Some three dozen top banks and securities firms will pay $144 billion in salary and benefits this year, the paper said. That’s a 4 percent increase from the $139 billion paid out in 2009, according to a survey conducted by the Journal. Compensation is expected to rise at 26 of the 35 firms surveyed, including banks, investment banks, hedge funds, money-management firms and securities exchanges.

Large Wall Street banks are unlikely to accelerate bonus payouts, however, to help their employees avoid the higher tax rates that may be coming when tax cuts enacted by the Bush administration expire on January 1.

A new Bloomberg survey says the public wants the government to punish the financial fraudsters. “57 percent of Americans have a mostly unfavorable or very unfavorable view of Wall Street, versus fewer than one-quarter who have a favorable opinion. Banks are viewed badly by 54 percent of poll respondents, and 60 percent have a negative opinion of insurance companies.”

In a sense, reformers have won the fight of public opinion, but the financial reform battle promises to be even tougher than the health care fight.

Why?

The public is just not as informed about complicated financial issues. Their eyes glaze over with all the talk of derivatives and credit default swaps. Those favoring needed reforms still don’t offer a popularly understood narrative based on morality as well as insider economic analysis. Few commentators outside the business press are talking about it.

This is why I made a new film Plunder: The Crime of Our Time investigating the crisis as a crime story. Because that’s what it is!

The Banks do understand the scale of the problem and the depths of anger by their customers. As a result, they are upping their touchy-feeling TV ads and fielding the biggest army of lobbyists in history to confuse, complicate, contain and, where possible cancel proposed reforms. It was reported that there were 6-8 lobbyists for each Member of Congress working against health care reform. On bank reform issues, it’s 25-1. Banks have the money and target it on politicians as a prudent investment to foster a climate that will allow them to make even more.

So far, the coalition for financial reform is not as large or organized as the movements championing health care reform. The AFL-CIO has resorted to guerilla theater, not guerilla warfare, a la the Tea Partiers. Most informed observers, to quote a Bidenism, know this issue is the real big F**k’in deal.

Even as more financial scandals surface, there is far too little follow up, not to mention investigations and denunciations. One report on Sify.com reveals, “since the financial crisis erupted in 2008, the FBI’s 1,000-agent New York office has tripled its mortgage fraud investigations squad and beefed up its securities and financial fraud group.

“The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center says it received 336,655 fraud complaints last year related to financial losses of $560 million, double the dollar amount reported the year before.”

Progressives don’t seem to appreciate the scale of this problem or how it could be turned into THE issue to organize around.  In contrast, the right just wants to ignore it because it believes the private sector can do no wrong.

Recently, documents surfaced from the Lehman bankruptcy showing how that company cooked the books along with many others in the industry. But, what’s being done about it, asks former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and Josh Rosner, the managing director of an independent financial services research firm, writing:

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist — and certainly not an accountant — to deduce one thing from the Lehman scandal. The misleading of regulators, investors and the public did not happen in isolation. Like Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Wachovia, Washington Mutual, Fannie/Freddie, CDOs, Bear, AIG, bond insurers, GM, Chrysler, CIT, California, Greece and the countless others wrapped up in this crisis, Lehman is “symptomatic of a banking system bent on finding ways to hide risk from the investing public and regulatory community.” …

It should be clear to all that a deeper examination of the relationship between all the audit firms and their clients on the issue of risk-obfuscation is needed. Limiting any inquiry to Lehman alone is inadequate.”

The cost of inaction is likely to be more big bank failures and more meltdowns. Don’t take my word for it. Lehman’s new chief is among those making scary warnings as Ed Harrison of Credit Writedowns explains:

“Lehman head Brian Marsal warned that Wall Street had not learned its lesson in the credit crisis and that another megabank bankruptcy was likely. Marsal made the remarks while in Berlin for a bankruptcy conference in an interview with German business daily Handelsblatt:

“Handelsblatt: you are handling the largest bankruptcy in human history. Can anything like this happen again?

“Bryan Marsal: It is even likely that a case of Lehman will repeat itself. In any case, as long as nothing fundamental changes in financial regulation and in financial institutions. Wall Street has not really learned a lot from the situation. There is still much too much leverage in the market, and credit default swaps remain completely unregulated. Even with regulators and in the companies little has been done after the global catastrophe.”

Underline that: “LITTLE HAS BEEN DONE.”

The situation is bad and getting worse. The Wall Street Journal reported recently on its front page about woes in the banking sector, noting banks are experiencing the biggest full year decline in 67 years.

Just two factoids to put in your don’t bank on the banks file:

-     16 year high of 702 banks at risk, according to the FDIC

-     Highest level of loans at least three months past due ever recorded

So far the government response has been less than forceful when it comes to the underlying frauds—no serious Pecora type investigation accompanied by some talk of beefing up white collar crime task forces but with few prosecutions so far. President Obama has mentioned this but not yet made it an issue. It seems to have become a ‘ho-hummer.’

Our fearless media is also downplaying this diaster because they don’t have a first class, high profile villain like Bernie Madoff to use to personalize the problem.

In other words, it’s shady business as usual with more businesses going out of business. And alongside this failure is a growing meltdown for what used to be the middle class and working class.

Quite reasonably, the public is becoming angrier because jobs are not coming back. And quiet as it is kept, they may not be coming back.

Writes Mark Zandi, “The job losses over the past three years have been across a wide range of industries and from coast to coast. And if you’ve lost your job, in all likelihood you will remain unemployed for longer than in any period since the Great Depression.”

Explains Eric Janzen of iTulip.com, “The cumulative and lasting damage caused by two consecutive, predictable and thus preventable asset bubbles is starting to dawn on their victims. Some call it the “new normal.” Millions of Americans have not recovered the income or job status they enjoyed a decade ago.’

This is not an abstraction. Just this morning, a man hustled me for a quarter as I was leaving the subway. As I reached into my pocket, he had a change of mind. “Forget it man,” he said. “I don’t need no quarter. I need a job.” It was as if he was talking to himself.

No Jobs, seething unrest and a slo-go approach to reform are a toxic mix. I feel like a broken record, hoping that growing outrage will finally turn into action. People feel robbed because they are being robbed. They are losing jobs, homes and hope. Many are beaten down but others are slowly rising up.

It’s one thing to feel good fulminating against a love affair with Capitalism. It’s another to realize that’s all we got, and so we must, once again, try to drive the corrupt money changers and banksters out of the system

For progressives who protested on health care, isn’t it time to engage the real pain in our economy? Has ignoring the crime of our time also become “the new normal?”

News Dissector Danny Schechter edits Mediachannel.org. His new film Plunder: The Crime of Our Time will be released by The Disinformation Company on April 6 on DVD, via iTunes and on cable systems’ Video-On-Demand channels.

Most people interviewed in the Bloomberg National Poll say they don’t like Wall Street, banks or insurance companies and favor letting the government punish bankers who helped cause the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Almost seven out of 10 people surveyed support using current bank regulators for consumer protection, backing positions held by the financial industry and Republicans over President Barack Obama’s proposal to establish an independent agency…

As the country struggles with a 9.7 percent unemployment rate while financial stocks surge, 57 percent of Americans have a mostly unfavorable or very unfavorable view of Wall Street, versus fewer than one-quarter who have a favorable opinion. Banks are viewed badly by 54 percent of poll respondents, and 60 percent have a negative opinion of insurance companies. … Fifty-six percent of those polled say they would support government action to limit compensation of those who helped cause the financial crisis, or to ban those people from working in the banking industry.

“The amount of money that people on Wall Street make seems to be really out of bounds,” said Laure Sinclair, 52, a part- time accountant who lives in Dallas. “But I don’t know that the government can regulate that because we want to be a capitalist society.” …

[continues at Bloomberg]

What’s it like to walk in Bernie Madoff’s shoes? You’ll get a chance to buy them, along with the billionaire swindler’s monogrammed socks, size 40-short suits and other items from his New York City and Montauk homes at an auction to be held in Morris County this spring.

James Plousis, U.S. Marshall for New Jersey, has worked out a deal to use donated space at the county’s public safety academy in Parsippany for a Madoff auction, likely to be held in April or May.

“We want to run an auction for as little cost as possible, so that just about every penny we make can go back to the victims,’’ Plousis said Wednesday. “I called Sheriff (Edward) Rochford in Morris County and he and the freeholders were very accommodating to us.’’

The planned auction will include furniture, rugs, clothing, utensils, wall hangings and hundreds of pairs of shoes — just about everything seized from Bernard and Ruth Madoff’s three-bedroom New York penthouse and three-bedroom Montauk home, Plousis said.

Also, they will auction the contents of a five-bedroom, five-bathroom Bridgewater house owned by Frank DiPascali, who was Madoff’s right-hand man in the massive Ponzi scheme.

Plousis pitched the sale location to Rochford about three weeks ago, the sheriff said.

“They needed a place with a lot of space and plenty of parking,’’ said Rochford. “When they sold his stuff in Miami, they had a huge turnout of people and media from all over the world. We’d have to be prepared for that.’’…

[continues at NJ.com]

On January 21st, Lloyd Blankfein left a peculiar voicemail message on the work phones of his employees at Goldman Sachs. Fast becoming America’s pre-eminent Marvel Comics supervillain, the CEO used the call to deploy his secret weapon: a pair of giant, nuclear-powered testicles. In his message, Blankfein addressed his plan to pay out gigantic year-end bonuses amid widespread controversy over Goldman’s role in precipitating the global financial crisis.

The bank had already set aside a tidy $16.2 billion for salaries and bonuses — meaning that Goldman employees were each set to take home an average of $498,246, a number roughly commensurate with what they received during the bubble years. Still, the troops were worried: There were rumors that Dr. Ballsachs, bowing to political pressure, might be forced to scale the number back. After all, the country was broke, 14.8 million Americans were stranded on the unemployment line, and Barack Obama and the Democrats were trying to recover the populist high ground after their bitch-whipping in Massachusetts by calling for a “bailout tax” on banks. Maybe this wasn’t the right time for Goldman to be throwing its annual Roman bonus orgy.

Not to worry, Blankfein reassured employees. “In a year that proved to have no shortage of story lines,” he said, “I believe very strongly that performance is the ultimate narrative.”

Translation: We made a shitload of money last year because we’re so amazing at our jobs, so fuck all those people who want us to reduce our bonuses.

Goldman wasn’t alone. The nation’s six largest banks — all committed to this balls-out, I drink your milkshake! strategy of flagrantly gorging themselves as America goes hungry — set aside a whopping $140 billion for executive compensation last year, a sum only slightly less than the $164 billion they paid themselves in the pre-crash year of 2007. In a gesture of self-sacrifice, Blankfein himself took a humiliatingly low bonus of $9 million, less than the 2009 pay of elephantine New York Knicks washout Eddy Curry. But in reality, not much had changed. “What is the state of our moral being when Lloyd Blankfein taking a $9 million bonus is viewed as this great act of contrition, when every penny of it was a direct transfer from the taxpayer?” asks Eliot Spitzer, who tried to hold Wall Street accountable during his own ill-fated stint as governor of New York.

Beyond a few such bleats of outrage, however, the huge payout was met, by and large, with a collective sigh of resignation. Because beneath America’s populist veneer, on a more subtle strata of the national psyche, there remains a strong temptation to not really give a shit…

[continues at Rolling Stone]

BBC News

The research, carried out by think tank the New Economics Foundation, says hospital cleaners create £10 of value for every £1 they are paid.

[Meanwhile,] leading bankers are a drain on the country because of the damage they caused to the global economy…They reportedly destroy £7 of value for every £1 they earn.

By devising schemes to cut the amount of money available to the government, tax accountants destroy £47 in value for every pound they generate.

All of us become weary of the incessant pleas for funding. However, I am sick and tired of being “sick and tired” of the Banksters, the funding of their casinos, the ever increasing subjugation to the banks and Wall Street.

Today, and today only, you can help us finish the film PLUNDER, the story of the financial crisis as a crime story but you have to do it by 5 PM EST TODAY (Jan. 20, 2010). You can be a part of this film for as little as $1.00. [Back This Project]

FAQs:

How do I make a pledge?

First, enter your pledge amount and select a reward. On the next page we’ll ask you to log in or sign up with Kickstarter.com, and then we’ll send you to Amazon Payments to complete your pledge with a major credit card.

When is my credit card charged?

If this project is fully funded on January 20, 05:00pm EST your credit card will be charged along with all the other backers of this project.

So my card is only charged if funding succeeds?

Yes! That’s part of what makes Kickstarter special. If a project isn’t fully funded, no one pays anything.

That’s all the time we have remaining on kickstarter.com.

What would our future be like if Elizabeth “the last great hope of the middle-class” Warren, head of the TARP oversight committee, a professor at Harvard, a champion of Main Street, had run for Ted Kennedy’s seat?

With immense fervor, I daily pray for President Obama to take that new wonder drug, “Grow-a-cet,” and fire the unholy trinity, i.e., Rahm [he made $18 MILLION on Wall Street in 30 months], Geithner [watch Elizabeth Warren confront Timmy], and Summers [earned $5.2 MILLION for one day of wrok for Wall Street], all of whom played a role in this economic meltdown. Geithner’s replacement should be Brooksley “I Told You So” Born who, in addition to the remarkable Sheila Bair, head of the FDIC and has fought Geithner, amongst others for us, not only could but moreover, would effectuate CHANGE we not only can believe in but benefit from as a constituency.

Yesterday, we received this letter from Michael Peters in Australia. He wants to help:

“Just completed my pledge of $100 through Kickstarter/Amazon. I live in Sydney, Australia – please choose min cost method of shipping or let me know.”

We MUST raise $3000

So far, we are more than halfway there but we will lose everything if we can’t reach our goal by TODAY!

In addition to making REAL change, if you give $500, you can have lunch on Wall Street with Danny in addition to being listed in the film’s credits, and receiving a “goodie bag” with films and books and … being paid in the currency of fulfillment.

We know that Haiti emergency has impacted this fund raising drive. And, the adage, “charity begins at home,” is also apt.

While producing the blog on the tragic and heartbreaking events in Haiti, I cannot help but wonder, where has been the telethon, or the ability to “text” help to the millions who have lost their jobs, their homes or their FICO scores during this crime of our time?

It’s our hope you can be generous on both fronts.

Please help make this film. Please be a Nike reader and just “DO IT” — NOW — dissectrix

Why Danny Needs Your Help

The film is completely shot, mostly edited, principally by volunteers and interns assisting Danny. It desperately needs a sound mix, color correction, creation of DVD Extras, and DVD authoring, all of which cost real money. The Disinformation Company, a home video distributor, is kicking in some of the money for this, but not enough. Danny needs $3,000 to be able to deliver the project for release.

Why He Needs Your Help Right Now

If the guilty parties on Wall Street and in Washington are to be brought to justice and serve jail time, we must put maximum pressure on lawmakers, regulators and attorneys general while the paper trail of evidence is still hot and still within relevant statutes of limitation. The recession may have been artificially shortened and sweetened by the stimulus, but thousands of people are still losing their jobs and their homes as a result of the bailout. Please join Danny in pushing for a corresponding jailout.

The Director

Danny Schechter is a veteran journalist who writes and speaks about economic and media issues. He is a multiple Emmy Award winner, having been a producer for ABC News, CNN and other major networks. His daily blog ‘News Dissector’ appears on MediaChannel.org, the website he edits, with weekly online commentaries on Huffington Post, Buzzflash, Alternet, Global Research, ZNet, Creative-I and many others. He has directed numerous films including ‘In Debt We Trust’ and ‘Weapons of Mass Deception.’

]]> http://www.disinfo.com/2010/01/deadline-today-%e2%80%94-help-fund-plunder-the-crime-of-our-time/feed/ 2 http://www.disinfo.com/2010/01/freefall-excerpt-too-late-to-fix-the-biggest-banking-blunder-in-history/ http://www.disinfo.com/2010/01/freefall-excerpt-too-late-to-fix-the-biggest-banking-blunder-in-history/#comments Tue, 19 Jan 2010 19:39:41 +0000 majestic http://www.disinfo.com/?p=19721 Rogue economist Joseph Stiglitz has a new book out, Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy, excerpted here by the Huffington Post:

The entire series of efforts to rescue the banking system were so flawed, partly because those who were somewhat responsible for the mess--as advocates of deregulation, as failed regulators, or as investment bankers--were put in charge of the repair. Perhaps not surprisingly, they all employed the same logic that had gotten the financial sector into trouble to get it out of it. The financial sector had engaged in highly leveraged, non-transparent transactions, many off balance sheet; it had believed that one could create value by moving assets around and repackaging them. The approach to getting the country out of the mess was based on the same "principles." Toxic assets were shifted from banks to the government--but that didn't make them any less toxic. Off-balance sheet and non-transparent guarantees became a regular feature of the Treasury, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and Federal Reserve. High leverage (open and hidden) became a feature of public institutions as well as private. Worse still were the implications for governance. The Constitution gives Congress the power to control spending. But the Federal Reserve was undertaking actions knowing full well that if the collateral that it was taking on proved bad, the taxpayer would bail it out. Whether the actions were legal or not is not the issue: they were a deliberate attempt to circumvent...

]]> Rogue economist Joseph Stiglitz has a new book out, Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy, excerpted here by the Huffington Post:

The entire series of efforts to rescue the banking system were so flawed, partly because those who were somewhat responsible for the mess–as advocates of deregulation, as failed regulators, or as investment bankers–were put in charge of the repair. Perhaps not surprisingly, they all employed the same logic that had gotten the financial sector into trouble to get it out of it. The financial sector had engaged in highly leveraged, non-transparent transactions, many off balance sheet; it had believed that one could create value by moving assets around and repackaging them. The approach to getting the country out of the mess was based on the same “principles.” Toxic assets were shifted from banks to the government–but that didn’t make them any less toxic. Off-balance sheet and non-transparent guarantees became a regular feature of the Treasury, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and Federal Reserve. High leverage (open and hidden) became a feature of public institutions as well as private.

Worse still were the implications for governance. The Constitution gives Congress the power to control spending. But the Federal Reserve was undertaking actions knowing full well that if the collateral that it was taking on proved bad, the taxpayer would bail it out. Whether the actions were legal or not is not the issue: they were a deliberate attempt to circumvent Congress, because they knew that the American people would be reluctant to approve more largesse for those who had caused so much harm and behaved so badly.

The U.S. government did something worse than trying to re-create the financial system of the past: It strengthened the too-big-to-fail banks; it introduced a new concept–too-big-to-be- financially-resolved; it worsened the problems of moral hazard; it burdened future generations with a legacy of debt; it cast a pallor of the risk of inflation over the U.S. dollar; and it strengthened many Americans’ doubts about the fundamental fairness of the system. Central bankers, like all humans, are fallible. Some observers argue for simple, rule-based approaches to policy (like monetarism and inflation targeting) because they reduce the potential for human fallibility. The belief that markets can take care of themselves and therefore government should not intrude has resulted in the largest intervention in the market by government in history; the result of following excessively simple rules was that the Fed had to take discretionary actions beyond those taken by any central bank in history. It had to make life and death decisions for each bank without even the guidance of a clear set of principles…

[continues at the Huffington Post]

]]> http://www.disinfo.com/2010/01/freefall-excerpt-too-late-to-fix-the-biggest-banking-blunder-in-history/feed/ 0 http://www.disinfo.com/2010/01/move-your-money-out-of-the-mega-banks/ http://www.disinfo.com/2010/01/move-your-money-out-of-the-mega-banks/#comments Mon, 11 Jan 2010 16:17:42 +0000 JacobSloan http://www.disinfo.com/?p=19033 The Huffington Post urges readers to move their savings and checking accounts out of Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, and Bank of America, and into smaller, independent banks. I think it's an inspired idea:

America's Main Street community banks -- the vast majority of which avoided the banquet of greed and corruption that created the toxic economic swamp we are still fighting to get ourselves out of -- are struggling. Why don't we take our money out of these big banks and put them into community banks? What would happen if lots of people around America decided to do the same thing?

]]> The Huffington Post urges readers to move their savings and checking accounts out of Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, and Bank of America, and into smaller, independent banks. I think it’s an inspired idea:

America’s Main Street community banks — the vast majority of which avoided the banquet of greed and corruption that created the toxic economic swamp we are still fighting to get ourselves out of — are struggling.

Why don’t we take our money out of these big banks and put them into community banks? What would happen if lots of people around America decided to do the same thing?

]]> http://www.disinfo.com/2010/01/move-your-money-out-of-the-mega-banks/feed/ 2 http://www.disinfo.com/2009/12/matt-taibbi-on-obamas-big-sellout/ http://www.disinfo.com/2009/12/matt-taibbi-on-obamas-big-sellout/#comments Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:31:58 +0000 ralph http://www.disinfo.com/?p=16904 There’s no one individual out there who been more on the ball about this financial “crisis” and the inherent/subsequent corruption than Matt Taibbi. I recommend reading all the work he’s done for Rolling Stone in the past year. Here is his latest article:

Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers “at the expense of hardworking Americans.” Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it’s not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired supporters who pushed him to his historic win was…

]]> There’s no one individual out there who been more on the ball about this financial “crisis” and the inherent/subsequent corruption than Matt Taibbi. I recommend reading all the work he’s done for Rolling Stone in the past year. Here is his latest article:

Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers “at the expense of hardworking Americans.” Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it’s not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired supporters who pushed him to his historic win was the sense that a genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club, that walls were being torn down, that things were, for lack of a better or more specific term, changing.

Then he got elected.

What’s taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history. Elected in the midst of a crushing economic crisis brought on by a decade of orgiastic deregulation and unchecked greed, Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street and remake the entire structure of the American economy. What he did instead was ship even his most marginally progressive campaign advisers off to various bureaucratic Siberias, while packing the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place. This new team of bubble-fattened ex-bankers and laissez-faire intellectuals then proceeded to sell us all out, instituting a massive, trickle-up bailout and systematically gutting regulatory reform from the inside.

How could Obama let this happen? Is he just a rookie in the political big leagues, hoodwinked by Beltway old-timers? Or is the vacillating, ineffectual servant of banking interests we’ve been seeing on TV this fall who Obama really is?

Read more of Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone

]]> http://www.disinfo.com/2009/12/matt-taibbi-on-obamas-big-sellout/feed/ 0 http://www.disinfo.com/2009/11/the-card-game-banks-credit-and-the-american-consumer/ http://www.disinfo.com/2009/11/the-card-game-banks-credit-and-the-american-consumer/#comments Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:36:07 +0000 ralph http://www.disinfo.com/?p=15493 The Card Game is the follow-up documentary to the Secret History of the Credit Card, one of the best documentaries I have ever seen on television. The trailer is below.

Hidden fees, skyrocketing interest rates, bankrupt consumers. FRONTLINE correspondent Lowell Bergman investigates the future of the consumer loan industry amidst an ongoing battle over increased government regulation. The Card Game airs Tuesday, Nov. 24 at 9 PM on PBS (check local listings or watch online).

]]> The Card Game is the follow-up documentary to the Secret History of the Credit Card, one of the best documentaries I have ever seen on television. The trailer is below.

Hidden fees, skyrocketing interest rates, bankrupt consumers. FRONTLINE correspondent Lowell Bergman investigates the future of the consumer loan industry amidst an ongoing battle over increased government regulation. The Card Game airs Tuesday, Nov. 24 at 9 PM on PBS (check local listings or watch online).

]]> http://www.disinfo.com/2009/11/the-card-game-banks-credit-and-the-american-consumer/feed/ 0 http://www.disinfo.com/2009/10/pay-your-bills-on-time-there%e2%80%99s-a-fee-for-that/ http://www.disinfo.com/2009/10/pay-your-bills-on-time-there%e2%80%99s-a-fee-for-that/#comments Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:58:16 +0000 klintron http://www.disinfo.com/?p=12636 In an attempt to squeeze more revenue out of consumers who don’t rack up much debt, Citigroup, Bank of America, and other credit card companies are adding new fees. According to USA Today credit card users are being hit with new “inactivity fees” and fees for not putting enough debt on your credit cards. Consumers thinking about canceling their cards face taking a hit to their credit scores for closing an account.

Other consumers may have no choice – Citibank has been closing some credit card accounts without reason or warning, damaging their customers credit ratings.

I cut-up my credit cards last night.

]]> In an attempt to squeeze more revenue out of consumers who don’t rack up much debt, Citigroup, Bank of America, and other credit card companies are adding new fees. According to USA Today credit card users are being hit with new “inactivity fees” and fees for not putting enough debt on your credit cards. Consumers thinking about canceling their cards face taking a hit to their credit scores for closing an account.

Other consumers may have no choice – Citibank has been closing some credit card accounts without reason or warning, damaging their customers credit ratings.

I cut-up my credit cards last night.

]]> http://www.disinfo.com/2009/10/pay-your-bills-on-time-there%e2%80%99s-a-fee-for-that/feed/ 2 http://www.disinfo.com/2009/09/man-sues-the-bank-of-america-for-1784-billion-trillion-dollars/ http://www.disinfo.com/2009/09/man-sues-the-bank-of-america-for-1784-billion-trillion-dollars/#comments Sun, 27 Sep 2009 18:28:03 +0000 Join Or DIE http://www.disinfo.com/?p=10490 Joe Rauch of Reuters writes:

Dalton Chiscolm is unhappy about Bank of America’s customer service — really, really unhappy.

Chiscolm in August sued the largest U.S. bank and its board, demanding that “1,784 billion, trillion dollars” be deposited into his account the next day. He also demanded an additional $200,164,000, court papers show.

Attempts to reach Chiscolm were unsuccessful. A Bank of America spokesman declined to comment.

“Incomprehensible,” U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said in a brief order released Thursday in Manhattan federal court.

“He seems to be complaining that he placed a series of calls to the bank in New York and received inconsistent information from a ‘Spanish womn,’” the judge wrote. “He apparently alleges that checks have been rejected because of incomplete routing numbers.”

Chin has experience with big numbers. He’s the judge who sentenced Bernard Madoff to a 150-year prison sentence for what the government called a $65 billion Ponzi scheme.

Bank of America Corp…

]]> Joe Rauch of Reuters writes:

Dalton Chiscolm is unhappy about Bank of America’s customer service — really, really unhappy.

Chiscolm in August sued the largest U.S. bank and its board, demanding that “1,784 billion, trillion dollars” be deposited into his account the next day. He also demanded an additional $200,164,000, court papers show.

Attempts to reach Chiscolm were unsuccessful. A Bank of America spokesman declined to comment.

“Incomprehensible,” U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said in a brief order released Thursday in Manhattan federal court.

“He seems to be complaining that he placed a series of calls to the bank in New York and received inconsistent information from a ‘Spanish womn,’” the judge wrote. “He apparently alleges that checks have been rejected because of incomplete routing numbers.”

Chin has experience with big numbers. He’s the judge who sentenced Bernard Madoff to a 150-year prison sentence for what the government called a $65 billion Ponzi scheme.

Bank of America Corp faces real legal problems, including New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s threat to sue its chief executive and a judge’s embarrassing rejection of a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Yet the money Chiscolm wants could dwarf all the bank’s other problems.

It’s larger than a sextillion dollars, or a 1 followed by 21 zeros. Chiscolm’s request is equivalent 1 followed by 22 digits.

The sum also dwarfs the world’s 2008 gross domestic product of $60 trillion, as estimated by the World Bank.

“These are the kind of numbers you deal with only on a cosmic scale,” said Sylvain Cappell, New York University’s Silver Professor at the Courant Institute for Mathematical Sciences. “If he thinks Bank of America has branches on every planet in the cosmos, then it might start to make some sense.”

Judge Chin gave Chiscolm until October 23 to better explain the basis for his claims, or else see his complaint dismissed.

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