what exactly did Bank of America do to earn its position as poster child for banking industry fraud?
Incidentally, around 1997 Bank of America merged with (or was purchased by) a much larger bank, NationsBanc Mortgage Corp. Nations was a prime wholesale mortgage banker as well as one of the largest mortgage servicers in the country.
I am another victim of the evil ensuing at the offices of Bank of America! We received a approval for short sale program 9/2/11 and were getting ready to sign the paperwork and send back to BOA when we found out that our home was foreclosed on 9/6/11!!!!! BOA quickly responded in letter saying that we actually did not qualify for the program. We have spent over three years trying to get loan mod, that was denied. Then short sale, which according to them was approved, but foreclosed on us anyway. We currently have a lawyer trying to help us with this mess.
Hadn't heard about Buddy Roemer until today. I like his message, but will need to do more research on him. At first, the few ideas that I've seen him present are sound ideas that would help our country out greatly. Ron Paul 2012 or maybe Buddy Roemer
Either way! They are helping get a different message out.
The fainting goats, although unnecessary for uprating, were definitely worth a look. Sadly, immediately reminded me of the Democratic Party response to criticism by Republicans, Corporations or Conservative demagogues of any stripe or extremity.
You see that arrow on the upper left? Only registered users can see it and it's your vote to put posts onto the front page. I don't care about series (links, FMN, SMC) being front paged because those are more for fun or to capture all of the beyond belief news, writings that happened which we couldn't get to here or someone else researched much better.
I checked my calculator on this post a good 3 times for each number, for I frankly couldn't believe the numbers I was actually getting. Talk about 6 ways to Sunday to boost the economy and the fact it will underfund social security, which is clearly under attack, I found particularly odious.
But with the trillions dumped on the excuse to boost economic growth, I think they could have hired all of America and given them 6 figure salaries by now. That's the point of Keynesian economics, to boost aggregate demand, domestically, which is why funds need to go to the lower wealth sectors of the nation, the people and why direct jobs programs work too.
Just like the WPA and CCC creates so many incredible public works, the Hoover dam, the GG bridge, electricity for E. Texas, implies they are way more bang for the buck as stimulus. I'll try to look at multipliers for these New Deal Era type of programs and write that type of thing up. Obviously a multiplier of 1.24, 1.3 and even 1.5 simply isn't worth it. (tax cuts have multipliers of 0.8 and such, really a waste).
Excellent analysis of President Zero's Bull$#!t excuse for plan. I can't look at him anymore, send Mrs' Zero out to give the BS speech, short tight dress please. Much more of Zero's BS and I'll need the scissors to cut my wrists.
I too can be added to the countless cases of abuse via B of A. However, I've been silent and have little doubt there are many more like me. The stories I have read are carbon copies of mine. This is only a fraction of the B of A victims that exist.
Numerian -- Well done! It will take nothing less than throwing about three dozen of these guys in jail like Bernie Madoff. One or two won't be enough (already happened). Got to be a bunch of 'em.
Also, Eric Schneiderman of New York is digging up some good stuff.
MI, with one of the highest unemployment rates and lord knows how many who have fallen off the count, in the nation, just limited welfare recipients to 48 months total. This is ridiculous. If they want people off welfare rolls, they need to have real work programs and training, that actually, esp. can accommodate work at home and support single mothers and others.
This nation is creating such a large underclass, it's two nations, the haves and have nots and those have nots are turning into the proletariat.
The fact Countrywide escaped any criminal prosecution has led to this, BoA being a worse situation than Countrywide ever was. We also have slap on the wrist fines, general, which are like tolls on the superhghway of massive American ripoffs.
There are other vendors owned by BOA that are getting businesses from consumers they should not be getting, fees are not in line and borrower consumers of the mortgage loans are getting the raw end of the deal, we concentrate on overcharging bank customers and yet mortgage customers with BOA are getting royally screwed with this lender. I agree "WHY IS THIS LENDER ALLOWED TO CONTINUE"!
JOLTS offers up a lot of data, but I don't recall seeing it broken down by hours, but I haven't looked throughout all of the databases, I think you're right it does not.
But many are working in part-time jobs because that's what they want. Taking those forced into part-time jobs due to "economic conditions", that ratio to total employed is 6.2%. So, I don't think you can tally up all of the part-timers here to have it be valid.
Be nice if the BLS in either the CES or JOLTS asked if a job was part-time or not. At least one a year maybe to get some sort of feel for how many jobs created or new are part time.
I think you're right saying as a general rule part-time jobs are crappy jobs, although it seems most of the jobs by occupational category created have been crappy jobs.
Great report about JOLTS, which seems to escape the mass media. While I appreciate you adding the U6 component, which I had mentioned here previously, I have another angle that makes the JOLTS report worse than U6. As you may know, the jobs reported by JOLTS include ALL jobs, both part-time and full-time, which is an important distinction. When you consider the labor force in total and then separate the part-time workers, you have nearly 20% of Americans working part-time.
I decided to take those 20% part-timers and subtract 20% from the overall JOLTS report. I plan to publish this and other stats this week, but here is my conclusion on JOLTS:
If nearly 20% of all available jobs are part-time, there are only 2.56 million full-time jobs for 25.6 million unemployed and underemployed looking for full-time work, or 10 workers for each available full-time position; more than double the 4.3 workers per job opening touted by most media outlets.
Part-time jobs don't usually offer higher pay or benefits, so they are not jobs that will get the jobs engine going or the economy back on track. Full-time jobs are needed and they are sorely lacking at this time.
... but I'm not up on Druids as an influence in economic theory or policy. Especially not in connection with Fort Sumter. But who knows what was down there in the catacombs? Like the possibly missing precious metals in a depository of one of the Twin Towers ... plenty of room for speculation ...
I like this thinking. It reminds me of the ideas of that remarkable convergence of some factions of Green Party and Libertarian Party back about 20 years ago.
Also, resources are strangely too often under-appreciated in economics. Like, I guess, there's some kind of grand market-intelligence theory that has already discounted all the fundamentals?
About China, I agree that we must first and foremost clean up our own house. Then we can take on China as a most worthy adversary.
I think a lot of it comes down to that China has a unified, integrated pro-China-manufacturing mercantilist policy that is very aggressive and very successful. It's part of their regular Five Year Plan, and they take it seriously.
Anybody remember about 10 years back when China cornered the leather market globally in order to accomplish mercantilist (monopolistic) objectives? That's the tip of the iceberg!
China manages economic war just like it prosecutes any other kind of war -- by the rules of Sun Tzu's Art of Warfare.
"Shanghai wasn't built in a day." Chinese planners waited patiently for the arrival in secret of the first nibble from Henry Kissinger in 1970, gracefully accepted Kissinger's acquiescence to their demand to take China's permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council in 1971, enthusiastically welcomed the historic visit of Richard Nixon in 1972, welcomed the real deal when George H. W. Bush came to Beijing in 1974 as President Ford's 'Chief of USA liaison office to the People's Republic of China' (before diplomatic recognition of China by USA), gracefully accepted the USA's bowing to reality when switching diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to Beijing in 1979 ... introduced post-Mao reforms under Long March veteran and political genius, Deng Xiaoping, throughout the 1980s ... made limits to reform perfectly clear at Tiananmen Square in 1989 ... took note of the coming era of corporate globalization and acted accordingly, especially through Hong Kong, to continue to improve standard of living for millions of Chinese ... received 'Most Favored Nation' status under the United States-China Act of 1993 ... absorbed Hong Kong in 1997 ... continued to take note of the coming era of corporate globalization, acting accordingly ... set loose the forces of competition within a system of state capitalism ... joined the WTO in 1997 ... lobbied the U.S. Congress for the China Trade Act which was enacted in 1999 ... infiltrated the WTO and the U.S. Congress ... hired the best math-type business analysts ever, sent their best and brightest to study economics at Harvard and Cornell and MIT ... and they have accomplished what they set out to do.
I hope this doesn't seem critical of China. I am just being descriptive. Frankly, I admire China. China is very strong, truly a worthy adversary.
They have defeated the United States, without having to fight the United States military -- much as the British, a century earlier, essentially conquered Imperial China without a single major battle having to be fought. (Would it then follow that those in Congress who collaborate in the foreign devils' rule are ... what? ... quislings? )
We aren't the only nation that is chafing under the Chinese yoke! Just a week or two back, Kyrgyzistan stopped the export of slurry and ore in order to prevent China's taking bullion production jobs and profits away from them. This move was years in the making, involving the remarkable existence (almost side-by-side) of both a USA and a Russian airbase in northern Kyrgyzistan. It ain't easy to demand your rights when dealing with the People's Republic of China, (which shares a long border with Kyrgyzistan), but the first step (for USA) is to make certain that no member of Congress dare oppose (as did every GOP member of Congress in 2010) disclosure of political contributions from foreign corporations (= governments, in a mercantilist system).
I hate to introduce politics into an EP economics blog. But, dammit, this is fundamental to all the China issues, and no one dares address it! If you want to oppose anti-American effects of the mercantilist policy of the People's Republic of China, you have to oppose current congressional Republicans. Going deeper, you have no choice but to dedicate yourself to the decline and fall of the Republican National Committee as it currently exists. It's as simple as that.
DISCLOSE passed in the House despite Republican opposition
NAYS All Republicans voted NAY
except 6 who abstained
Observers say it all came down to one simple thing: opposition from the Republican National Committee! Threats to withdraw campaign money and media support! And not one patriot out of the whole dang bunch of them!
And, if you can't stomach Obama and the Democrats, it's past time to join and support ANY political party other than either of the two major parties. I mean, if you find yourself between a rock and a hard place, isn't that time to move yourself?
But PUH-LEEZE stop your smiley-faced idiocy of "let's all just buy American" and your belly-aching about the yuan's peg-to-the-dollar!
You may have a different point of view, of course. You may think that we should just monkey-do China, or at least Singapore. Many Republicans openly advocate such fundamentally anti-American policies.
The problem is that our democratic (small d) and republican (small r) traditions are fundamentally opposed to a mercantilist monopolistic type of government (Communist corporatism). Republicans and some Democrats talk up Singapore as the 21st Century utopian model, but most Americans (I hope) are not interested. America is the land of competition -- of free enterprise where the ideal is a transparent and stable tax and anti-trust environment that fosters success of efficient small businesses free of all preference systems.
That's why, IMO, we won't get anywhere belly-aching about China while doing nothing to clean our own house. We need either:
(1) An across-the-board tariff (15%) to level the playing field so that USA producers will no longer be forced by anti-American politicians to subsidize foreign competition;
OR,
(2) What Robert Oak has proposed, namely, renegotiating all all FTAs along realistic lines, including VATs at our borders.
(The reason that I prefer ABT is for the sake of predictable and stable business environment, rather than playing the mercantilist game which inevitably reduces to ultimately inefficient government intervention in every major business decision ... but I guess if we live in a mercantilist world, then we have to play by those rules.)
Incidentally, around 1997 Bank of America merged with (or was purchased by) a much larger bank, NationsBanc Mortgage Corp. Nations was a prime wholesale mortgage banker as well as one of the largest mortgage servicers in the country.
Nice work, way to go, keep it up!!
Absolutely ridiculous. Obama is wanting more defunding of social security as a "jobs plan".
I am another victim of the evil ensuing at the offices of Bank of America! We received a approval for short sale program 9/2/11 and were getting ready to sign the paperwork and send back to BOA when we found out that our home was foreclosed on 9/6/11!!!!! BOA quickly responded in letter saying that we actually did not qualify for the program. We have spent over three years trying to get loan mod, that was denied. Then short sale, which according to them was approved, but foreclosed on us anyway. We currently have a lawyer trying to help us with this mess.
In order to be funny there must be some truth, this comment is very funny.
Hadn't heard about Buddy Roemer until today. I like his message, but will need to do more research on him. At first, the few ideas that I've seen him present are sound ideas that would help our country out greatly. Ron Paul 2012 or maybe Buddy Roemer
Either way! They are helping get a different message out.
The fainting goats, although unnecessary for uprating, were definitely worth a look. Sadly, immediately reminded me of the Democratic Party response to criticism by Republicans, Corporations or Conservative demagogues of any stripe or extremity.
You see that arrow on the upper left? Only registered users can see it and it's your vote to put posts onto the front page. I don't care about series (links, FMN, SMC) being front paged because those are more for fun or to capture all of the beyond belief news, writings that happened which we couldn't get to here or someone else researched much better.
I checked my calculator on this post a good 3 times for each number, for I frankly couldn't believe the numbers I was actually getting. Talk about 6 ways to Sunday to boost the economy and the fact it will underfund social security, which is clearly under attack, I found particularly odious.
But with the trillions dumped on the excuse to boost economic growth, I think they could have hired all of America and given them 6 figure salaries by now. That's the point of Keynesian economics, to boost aggregate demand, domestically, which is why funds need to go to the lower wealth sectors of the nation, the people and why direct jobs programs work too.
Just like the WPA and CCC creates so many incredible public works, the Hoover dam, the GG bridge, electricity for E. Texas, implies they are way more bang for the buck as stimulus. I'll try to look at multipliers for these New Deal Era type of programs and write that type of thing up. Obviously a multiplier of 1.24, 1.3 and even 1.5 simply isn't worth it. (tax cuts have multipliers of 0.8 and such, really a waste).
Excellent analysis of President Zero's Bull$#!t excuse for plan. I can't look at him anymore, send Mrs' Zero out to give the BS speech, short tight dress please. Much more of Zero's BS and I'll need the scissors to cut my wrists.
I too can be added to the countless cases of abuse via B of A. However, I've been silent and have little doubt there are many more like me. The stories I have read are carbon copies of mine. This is only a fraction of the B of A victims that exist.
Naked Capitalism has a great post showing how payday loans are simply renaming themselves.
Payday loans should be banned and I'd also say of the spam that tries to get on this site, at least 60% of it are payday loans.
It's so extremely predatory, of course they should be banned or regulated to real personal loans and rates.
Another great example of crime through finance.
Numerian -- Well done! It will take nothing less than throwing about three dozen of these guys in jail like Bernie Madoff. One or two won't be enough (already happened). Got to be a bunch of 'em.
Also, Eric Schneiderman of New York is digging up some good stuff.
MI, with one of the highest unemployment rates and lord knows how many who have fallen off the count, in the nation, just limited welfare recipients to 48 months total. This is ridiculous. If they want people off welfare rolls, they need to have real work programs and training, that actually, esp. can accommodate work at home and support single mothers and others.
This nation is creating such a large underclass, it's two nations, the haves and have nots and those have nots are turning into the proletariat.
Fainting Goats
That's what happens when one displaces goats from their day job.
The fact Countrywide escaped any criminal prosecution has led to this, BoA being a worse situation than Countrywide ever was. We also have slap on the wrist fines, general, which are like tolls on the superhghway of massive American ripoffs.
Great detail as usual Numerian.
There are other vendors owned by BOA that are getting businesses from consumers they should not be getting, fees are not in line and borrower consumers of the mortgage loans are getting the raw end of the deal, we concentrate on overcharging bank customers and yet mortgage customers with BOA are getting royally screwed with this lender. I agree "WHY IS THIS LENDER ALLOWED TO CONTINUE"!
JOLTS offers up a lot of data, but I don't recall seeing it broken down by hours, but I haven't looked throughout all of the databases, I think you're right it does not.
But many are working in part-time jobs because that's what they want. Taking those forced into part-time jobs due to "economic conditions", that ratio to total employed is 6.2%. So, I don't think you can tally up all of the part-timers here to have it be valid.
Be nice if the BLS in either the CES or JOLTS asked if a job was part-time or not. At least one a year maybe to get some sort of feel for how many jobs created or new are part time.
I think you're right saying as a general rule part-time jobs are crappy jobs, although it seems most of the jobs by occupational category created have been crappy jobs.
Thanks for the tip on presidential candidate Buddy Roemer. He seems genuinely concerned with American jobs.
Great report about JOLTS, which seems to escape the mass media. While I appreciate you adding the U6 component, which I had mentioned here previously, I have another angle that makes the JOLTS report worse than U6. As you may know, the jobs reported by JOLTS include ALL jobs, both part-time and full-time, which is an important distinction. When you consider the labor force in total and then separate the part-time workers, you have nearly 20% of Americans working part-time.
I decided to take those 20% part-timers and subtract 20% from the overall JOLTS report. I plan to publish this and other stats this week, but here is my conclusion on JOLTS:
If nearly 20% of all available jobs are part-time, there are only 2.56 million full-time jobs for 25.6 million unemployed and underemployed looking for full-time work, or 10 workers for each available full-time position; more than double the 4.3 workers per job opening touted by most media outlets.
Part-time jobs don't usually offer higher pay or benefits, so they are not jobs that will get the jobs engine going or the economy back on track. Full-time jobs are needed and they are sorely lacking at this time.
Keep up your great work!
... but I'm not up on Druids as an influence in economic theory or policy. Especially not in connection with Fort Sumter. But who knows what was down there in the catacombs? Like the possibly missing precious metals in a depository of one of the Twin Towers ... plenty of room for speculation ...
I like this thinking. It reminds me of the ideas of that remarkable convergence of some factions of Green Party and Libertarian Party back about 20 years ago.
Also, resources are strangely too often under-appreciated in economics. Like, I guess, there's some kind of grand market-intelligence theory that has already discounted all the fundamentals?
About China, I agree that we must first and foremost clean up our own house. Then we can take on China as a most worthy adversary.
Uncomfortable truth
I think a lot of it comes down to that China has a unified, integrated pro-China-manufacturing mercantilist policy that is very aggressive and very successful. It's part of their regular Five Year Plan, and they take it seriously.
Anybody remember about 10 years back when China cornered the leather market globally in order to accomplish mercantilist (monopolistic) objectives? That's the tip of the iceberg!
China manages economic war just like it prosecutes any other kind of war -- by the rules of Sun Tzu's Art of Warfare.
"Shanghai wasn't built in a day." Chinese planners waited patiently for the arrival in secret of the first nibble from Henry Kissinger in 1970, gracefully accepted Kissinger's acquiescence to their demand to take China's permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council in 1971, enthusiastically welcomed the historic visit of Richard Nixon in 1972, welcomed the real deal when George H. W. Bush came to Beijing in 1974 as President Ford's 'Chief of USA liaison office to the People's Republic of China' (before diplomatic recognition of China by USA), gracefully accepted the USA's bowing to reality when switching diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to Beijing in 1979 ... introduced post-Mao reforms under Long March veteran and political genius, Deng Xiaoping, throughout the 1980s ... made limits to reform perfectly clear at Tiananmen Square in 1989 ... took note of the coming era of corporate globalization and acted accordingly, especially through Hong Kong, to continue to improve standard of living for millions of Chinese ... received 'Most Favored Nation' status under the United States-China Act of 1993 ... absorbed Hong Kong in 1997 ... continued to take note of the coming era of corporate globalization, acting accordingly ... set loose the forces of competition within a system of state capitalism ... joined the WTO in 1997 ... lobbied the U.S. Congress for the China Trade Act which was enacted in 1999 ... infiltrated the WTO and the U.S. Congress ... hired the best math-type business analysts ever, sent their best and brightest to study economics at Harvard and Cornell and MIT ... and they have accomplished what they set out to do.
I hope this doesn't seem critical of China. I am just being descriptive. Frankly, I admire China. China is very strong, truly a worthy adversary.
They have defeated the United States, without having to fight the United States military -- much as the British, a century earlier, essentially conquered Imperial China without a single major battle having to be fought. (Would it then follow that those in Congress who collaborate in the foreign devils' rule are ... what? ... quislings?
)
We aren't the only nation that is chafing under the Chinese yoke! Just a week or two back, Kyrgyzistan stopped the export of slurry and ore in order to prevent China's taking bullion production jobs and profits away from them. This move was years in the making, involving the remarkable existence (almost side-by-side) of both a USA and a Russian airbase in northern Kyrgyzistan. It ain't easy to demand your rights when dealing with the People's Republic of China, (which shares a long border with Kyrgyzistan), but the first step (for USA) is to make certain that no member of Congress dare oppose (as did every GOP member of Congress in 2010) disclosure of political contributions from foreign corporations (= governments, in a mercantilist system).
I hate to introduce politics into an EP economics blog. But, dammit, this is fundamental to all the China issues, and no one dares address it! If you want to oppose anti-American effects of the mercantilist policy of the People's Republic of China, you have to oppose current congressional Republicans. Going deeper, you have no choice but to dedicate yourself to the decline and fall of the Republican National Committee as it currently exists. It's as simple as that.
I am prepared to document my claims:
OpenCongress showing party-line vote in Senate
AYES for DISCLOSE, only Democrats, including Sen. Sanders (I, VT),
zero Democrats abstaining
DISCLOSE failed in Senate despite a majority, due to Republican filibuster
(cloture maneuver without super-majority of 60)
NAYS to DISCLOSE, only Republicans
except 2 who abstained
OpenCongress showing party-line vote in House
AYES for DISCLOSE, only Democrats,
2 Democrats abstaining
DISCLOSE passed in the House despite Republican opposition
NAYS All Republicans voted NAY
except 6 who abstained
Observers say it all came down to one simple thing: opposition from the Republican National Committee! Threats to withdraw campaign money and media support! And not one patriot out of the whole dang bunch of them!
See, CitzenVox.org's "Partisan Politics At Its Worst"
See also, NYT archive (as of 7 September 2011)
And, if you can't stomach Obama and the Democrats, it's past time to join and support ANY political party other than either of the two major parties. I mean, if you find yourself between a rock and a hard place, isn't that time to move yourself?
OTHERWISE, if you want to cling to your delusions about the GOP -- with the notable and praiseworthy exception of Buddy Roemer -- go ahead ... make Hu's day!
But PUH-LEEZE stop your smiley-faced idiocy of "let's all just buy American" and your belly-aching about the yuan's peg-to-the-dollar!
You may have a different point of view, of course. You may think that we should just monkey-do China, or at least Singapore. Many Republicans openly advocate such fundamentally anti-American policies.
The problem is that our democratic (small d) and republican (small r) traditions are fundamentally opposed to a mercantilist monopolistic type of government (Communist corporatism). Republicans and some Democrats talk up Singapore as the 21st Century utopian model, but most Americans (I hope) are not interested. America is the land of competition -- of free enterprise where the ideal is a transparent and stable tax and anti-trust environment that fosters success of efficient small businesses free of all preference systems.
That's why, IMO, we won't get anywhere belly-aching about China while doing nothing to clean our own house. We need either:
(1) An across-the-board tariff (15%) to level the playing field so that USA producers will no longer be forced by anti-American politicians to subsidize foreign competition;
OR,
(2) What Robert Oak has proposed, namely, renegotiating all all FTAs along realistic lines, including VATs at our borders.
(The reason that I prefer ABT is for the sake of predictable and stable business environment, rather than playing the mercantilist game which inevitably reduces to ultimately inefficient government intervention in every major business decision ... but I guess if we live in a mercantilist world, then we have to play by those rules.)
"You pays your money and you takes your choice."
BTW: On Singapore as a 'low-tax' capitalist paradise, see David Cay Johnston's Reuters blog, Think Singapore is a 'low-tax' haven? Think again
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