Damn.....these guys are just trying to be entrepreneurs.....trying to make a buck and put hundreds of clericals to work at barely above minimum wage while the top management basks in their own riches and invest their wealth in the stock market. In steps the government and they are throttled. This sounds familiar....... http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/06/news/economy/housing_scams/index.htm?postversion=2009040611
It's a shame that there are scam artists out there, I hope they catch them all. It's endemic in human society though. I watched Dateline last night and they had 2 scams, one was a scam on a fuel enhancer that promised to double your gas mileage, but didn't do anything except lighten your wallet by 2K. The govt has tried to get an injunction against him selling it but have failed. Then they went to the Nigerian scams, amazing how many people fall for these scams. There is constant fraud in the medicare and welfare systems. Every president in my lifetime has promised to root out the fraud in these and it's stlll there. Unfortuneately I don't think the govt can overcome either human greed or gulliability. Terry
I watched an interesting thing on the recent events on the stock market, and then another show about Bernie Madoff that was on the history channel. To me, the flaw in the production of the show was the over emphasis on regulation... as in, we need MORE regulation to prevent crooks like this from getting away with the things that they do. However, as the show itself stated quite clearly... This guy was reported to the SEC as a fraud back during the Clinton Administration. A numbers guys out of Boston ran the math on what Madoff was claiming and proved before the SEC that using Bernie's own numbers he was either: 1. Fronting his sales which is illegal or 2. Running a ponzi scheme on a scale the world has never known. They could show that he probably wasn't doing the first, since the math didn't really add up there... which left you with one option, he was running a Ponzi scheme. This was basically proven more than 10 years ago. No additional regulation was needed, the SEC just did not look into it further. They can claim that it took the credit crisis to expose him, but that simply is not true. It was proven way back when.... but the SEC under either of the past 2 Admins didn't go after him.
Not good for either administration but 8 years under Bush is a long time for this to continue. What is up with this? These kinds of issues along with the credit crisis are undermining our system. I just got off the phone with BOA because out of the clear blue as I have long been reading about they sent me a letter stating that my rates were going to go through the roof in three weeks. I called and placed my 2 cards with them on hold and even though they are not officially closed they will not be used at all and I will still at least be able to pay at the current rates. The lady says this is being done with all of their account holders....nothing against me which is the first time I have ever heard of this kind of honesty coming from one of these companies. In any event with this kind of action across the board the economy will remain in a rut for quite some time with regard to consumer spending because unless it is cash or all paid off in one month...which some do I know.....no one will be making purchases. For paying it all off in one month purchases I have always used Amex and that seems to work best for me.
I got the same letter from BOA on Saturday re: a card my wife and I carry. We also have our mortgage with them. I am waiting until I cool down in a couple of days before I call them. God help the poor lackey that answers my call. Given that they now officially owe their very existence to money they begged off the American taxpayer I find this particularly disgusting. We haven't even used the card in a year. We have never been late for a payment. Our reward? More than double the interest rate. I think I have until May 1 to respond. So what's the deal, Dave. You freeze the card and they hold the rate? What do I get after I tell them to shove it up their ass?
George....I waited until I could detect the attitude of the person answering before I embarked on my course of action. I didn't know if I was going to become aggressive against an impetuous, I don't care type of person and ask for a supervisor or I was going to get someone who generally did seem to give a rat's ass what happened to me. Fortunately for me I got the latter and so I was as nice as I could be because I wanted to come out with the best deal I could.....in spite of my initial anger. So....by putting the purchasing ability of the card on hold I could "opt out" and still pay off at my original rate. Since I have barely been using the cards anyway and really had no plans to use them this was my best deal and it only works if they won't f**K your credit over when you do it. She assured me that by keeping the card open but not usable my credit would remain unchanged but you cannot use the card for anything so make sure you have no recurring charges that you forgot about like the McAfee annual fee or they will gleefully bust you right back to the exorbitant, we love to rape you.. rate. Good luck.
I got the same letter and the same response from Chase where I have three cards. However I let them raise my rates as I pay them off every month. The reason I keep them is that I get from 1% to 5% rebates on everything I purchase so their raise in rates don't cost me anything. If they do away with those rebates the cards are history and I made it pretty clear I won't carry anything over. It's kind of amazing to me that the cost of money is down but some of these cards increse their rate. On the othr hand Discover cut my rates.
Interesting the lady said the only people that seem to take this in stride and use the card anyway are those that only have the card to use and pay off monthly...which makes all the sense. The problem I have is that some people like me use some cards like Amex to do it that way and use other cards to pay off in monthly increments....which of course has proven to be a monumentally stupid idea for all Americans. Plastic is spastic.
Dave, While you continue to point the finger of blame at Bush, I think you should watch both shows. The economic expert insisting we need more regulation was quite clear that the Clinton Administration didn't want anything to do with the SEC. They let them do what they do and got the hell out of their way. The Bush Admin was much the same way except that they pushed for even more deregulation. If you remember, Clinton's initial economy was going quite poorly. It wasn't until he embraced a 'hands off' approach to most American business that he saw the economy turn around. Whether the reason for that was consumer confidence, the dot com boom, or what have you.. He got the hell out of the way of it and didn't want to tinker with it.. If that were Bush, you'd be accusing him of turning a willful blind eye to the subject.. To All, Another interesting aspect to that program was the coverage of the housing bust.. This is something that I've been following closely over the past several years. You see, while I was buying a large house for myself in Alabama for roughly what my parents paid for their smaller house in the late 70s, my sister and friends were out buying homes that were certainly no better than mine.. but while I was paying 105k, they were paying 700k+ for homes. this just amazed me. I know several teachers that bought homes for 200k in the mid to late 90s that were able to turn around and sell those homes in the 2000s for over a million dollars... Eliminating the notion that the homes had since become platinum coated, that should be quite indicative of an overly inflated market.. but everyone turned a blind eye to it because they saw bigger dollars and bigger homes. The blame does NOT stop or start with the lenders. People lost sight of what is important. While people made fun of me for 'living in the South on a dirt floor', I laughed darkly when CNN reported just a month ago that Decatur, AL was one of the few housing markets in America that is still growing (and booming in fact). I use to watch those 'flip this house' type shows that became so popular over the past decade with amazement. People would buy **** homes in **** neighborhoods for a song... call it 80 to 100k.. They'd dump 10 to 40k in refurb on the property, then sell the damned thing for 200k+. The fact that these homes sold not only amazes me, but it seemed to endorse this practice of 75 to 100% mark up by simply slapping a set of tits on the bull... The reality is, those homes were being bought by people who ordinarily would have qualified for much less money... and that home would have sat unsold on the market at the asking price. The greed, on all levels, is coming home to roost. Time to stop blaming and start acting. Stop asking what someone else can do for you, and ask what you can do for yourself...and in return the society as a whole because now you aren't a burden on the state.
That's always been my mantra in business. It's why I have been pulling the left lever in the last few elections. :wink: But really....before you go off on that topic again..... What can we really do as individuals other than write our congressmen about these issues?
Thanks Bill. Dave, help by leading not by looking to see who can help you. I know you're more than capable of it.