BofA to Roll in Debit-Card Dough

Poor Bank of America. Profits are down this year. Only $2 billion the first quarter of this year compared to $3.7 billion for the same period last year. That's $2 billion in three months. Thus, only $8 billion this year unless corporate heads find a way to make more.

A major reason for that nose dive is Countrywide Financial. BofA bought that corrupt mortgage lending millstone in 2008, no doubt hoping to use it as a cash cow, since Countrywide was financing some 20% of all mortages in the U.S. News that BofA was buying Countrywide sent eyebrows across the country into the stratosphere, given that the mortgage behemoth was already facing a legion of legal questions, was already shedding employees and flailing around for other ways to keep its head above water.

Instead of raking in dough, though, BofA watched Countrywide hemorrhage assets thanks to mushrooming legal woes, such as a parade of lawsuits charging deceptive lending practices, false advertising and unfair business shenanigans. One settlement with several states' attorneys general involved modifying  troubled 'predatory loans' of up to $8.4 billion dollars.

BofA has been on my radar as a money-grubber to avoid ever since its financial woes--primarily resulting from bad loans--in the late 1980s  (do the names Sam Armacost and Tom Clausen ring a bell?) when it was a San Francisco-based company, and again in 1997 ($1.4 billion to a hedge fund that went south). That resulted in the real BofA being bought like a shark swallowing a fish by NationsBank in Charlotte NC, which apparently thought the name, Bank of America, had more cachet, as that became the absorbing NationsBank's new handle.

One thing that didn't change with that acquision was bad financial decision-making. For some reason in the emerging corporate-dominant age, it wasn't enough to just be a good bank, providing good banking services to its customers. It had to keep gorging itself and bloating itself with ever-higher profits.

So how to recoup the losses from its bone-headed Countrywide and other bad decisions? The only way capitalism, American-style, knows. Find new ways to soak its customers. In the banking world, that way is to come up with even more fees it can charge its customers to use their own money. This time it's in the form of a debit-card fee.

(Don't expect any help from Congress, BTW, despite the deeply flawed 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. In addition to making highly valued and effective campaign contributions, BofA plies most-favored, most likely to be swayed lawmakers with mortgage financing at noncompetitive rates, i.e. lower rates than regular customers could possibly hope to get, of which Sen. Chris Dodd was a major recipient.

I've long been way too conservative to do business with the liberally bad-deal maker BofA, which is now giving me yet another reason to keep its money-grubbing hands off my money.

Despite its history or bad-decisions, though, BofA remains a leader in the banking world and news today indicates that other banks will be following the BofA's debit-card-fee charge, and that this is just the beginning of a new round of the high cost to Americans for "banking privileges."

My understanding is that this charge is going to be an automatic monthly $5 fee (for starters, no doube), not a per-use fee like an ATM fee.

All of this is making my mattress -- and the Occupy Wall Street movement -- look more and more attractive.

GOP's Protected "Untouchables" Class

President Obama's opponents are trying to shoot down his debt-reduction plan, which includes fair treatment of rich people and for-profit corporations (=>), by charging him with waging class warfare.

Plus, they say, equalizing the tax structure to bring rates for the rich up as high as the rate middle Americans pay would reduce the debt by only 10 percent.

Ten percent? In my truly conservative opinion, I'd say that's quite a dent.

Or as my husband said, "That's a good start."

He then came up with what I think would make a great debt-reduction mantra:

"Start with fair,
Work from there."

As for declaring class warfare, that's exactly what Republican have done, proving once again that going on the offensive by accusing their enemies (yes, they do indeed consider Obama the enemy and, as they have repeatedly said that limiting him to one term is their number one priority. Not reducting the unemployment rate. Not getting Americans back to work. Not returning the middle class, which has been shipped overseas, back to the U.S. Not ending wars this country is waging in other countries. But vanquishing Obama.), of doing what they are, in fact, doing themselves.

Republicans are the ones who declared class warfare. They did that by turning millionares into a special class. By making them a class of 'untouchables'.  By putting them off limits in the "shared sacrifice" that other Americans are being told they must participate in.

BTW, notice how those who oppose leveling the rate-rate paying field are rich?

Poor Louisana GOP Rep. John Fleming is crying crocodile tears because Obama's proposal might take a bite out of the $200,000 he spends, according to his math, on feeding his family.

Fox darling Bill O'Reilly says being subjected to the same tax rate as middle Americans, which is what Obama is proposing, will prompt him to quit his $10 million-a-year TV-talk job.

Sob stories abound.