tagged w/ Bank of America
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This may be what many have been predicting since 2008. FHA has filed a lawsuite against 17 banks. Bank of America is up to its diamond studded tie pins in lawsuits, fines, and repercussions for its criminal activities. Between the Eurozone imploding and the big banks collapsing under their own weight.....This may be what many have been predicting since 2008. FHA has filed a lawsuite... more
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"SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) – It was a slow-moving Occupy Wall Street protest, but it was an effective one. A dozen senior citizens calling themselves “the wild old women” succeeded in closing a Bank of America branch in Bernal Heights Thursday.
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Since I was about 9 and first heard of a California law against protests in the State Capitol, a law that was tailor made to stop the pointed remarks of one old gent who reminded reps that voters, not them, were actually in charge, I have always wanted to be an elderly protester. How I yearned for wrinkles, a stooped back and a cane to raise in anger, swaying it to punctuate my rants. It is still a goal, the last check on my own weird bucket list.
Living in a capitol city of one state made me even more sure of my childhood dream. And I plan to retire to the capitol city of another state where I might realize a life long dream of pissing off enough guys in suits that they consider a law tailor made to slow me down.
Bless the young people who first decided to OWS. Bless all the middle-aged and older folks who joined them. Bless those 'Raging Grannies' I had forgotten about, until a dear friend recently reminded me, who years ago started raising bloody hell at various recruitment centers, knowing what eager young people did not, that war IS hell and the young should not be so wasted. Bless the geezers with canes and walkers who are old enough to recall then banks were well regulated, and why that was so.
Bless us all, and keep us in the will to fight until the passion for justice, economic and other, leaves our bones with our last breaths.
Power to the Geezer People!"SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) – It was a slow-moving Occupy Wall Street protest,... more
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Every August arrives with thoughts of both darkness and light; my mother Mary’s birthday on the fifteenth (also the Feast of the Assumption of divine Mother Mary) and the 1945 anniversary of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the 6th and 9th respectively. These dates are etched on my cerebral wall; the latter two changed our world forever in ways never before imagined.
A primitive race of beings had broken some say a forbidden barrier. Energized by fossil fuel and the desperation of world war scientists near Santa Fe New Mexico harnessed the power responsible for the formation of star systems.
http://infinitetolerance.com/music-2/buddhakan/Every August arrives with thoughts of both darkness and light; my mother... more
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While the general media may be ignoring the latest peculiar twist on the "Occupy" theme, or in this case the "occupyourhomes.org", Bank of America is taking it quote seriously. As a reminder, "Tuesday, December 6th is the National Day of Action to stop and reverse foreclosures. The Occupy Homes movement is holding actions around the country in support of homeowners and people fighting to have a home. Find an event near you and join in our day of action tomorrow!. There are actions happening in over 20 cities nationwide. Events are taking place in Brooklyn, Buffalo and Rochester New York; Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose, Petaluma, Sacramento, Paradise and Contra Costa California; Lake Worth, Florida; Atlanta, Fayetteville, and DeKalb Georgia; Chicago, Illinois; Bloomington, Indiana; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Cleveland, Ohio; Denver, Colorado; Detroit and Southgate Michigan; St. Louis, Missouri; Portland, Oregon; and Seattle, Washington." And if you have not heard about today's protest on the conventional media that is understandable: as BAC says internally, this event "could impact our industry." Here are the specific warnings to BAC "field services" agents: i) Your safety is our primary concern, so do not engage with the protesters; ii) While in neighborhoods, please take notice of vacant BAC Field Services managed homes and ensure they are secured; iii) Remind all parties of the bank’s media policy and report any media incidents.
Aside from the superficial implications, what is more important is that the big banks are showing precisely what the weakest links in the system are, and what makes them the most nervous: it is not protesters living in tents in a major metropolitan city: it is protesters disrupting the lifeblood of the broken banking system - the home selling/repossession pathway. Expect many more such protests now that Bank of America has tipped its hand.
Continued at: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/bank-america-sends-internal-email-exposing-where-occupy-movement-hurting-it-mostWhile the general media may be ignoring the latest peculiar twist on the... more
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Dagum
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added this
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2 months ago
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Obama: Banks Broke No Laws
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dty1ejhvexM&feature=related
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The powers that be finally struck back. They needed a reason and unfortunately some of the Occupy protesters gave it to them- the health and safety issue.
With all the best intentions of the Occupy Movement- there were some legitimate concerns about debris and pockets of occasional violence in the camps. Businesses that surrounded several of these camps complained to their respective city leaders that the movement was bad for business- in others words- the occupiers had to go.
Politicians frightened of the business community caved in to their demands and used the shield of health and public safety issue as a cover to protect themselves. Once again, votes and money wins.The powers that be finally struck back. They needed a reason and unfortunately some of... more
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Washington Water Power, now known as Avista, has been in the Spokane area since the late 1800’s. It has grown a lot since then.
Are you outraged that Washington Water Power, now known as Avista, has been in the Spokane area since the late 1800’s. It has grown a lot since then.
Are you outraged that Avista, which is basically a monopoly, is allowed to pay their executives anywhere near these amounts below. Avista has no risk, run a monopoly, are protected by the state and have little concern with what the rates are doing to a lot of people in their area.
What the heck is wrong with the board of directors?
Why is Avista allowed to be a monopoly!?!?
We have people in Spokane having to make the decision of either paying the Avista bill or food and medicine.
Avista Corp. Chairman and CEO Scott Morris earned $3.25million in total compensation last year.
Executive Salary Compensation
Scott Morris (chairman, CEO) $3,245,967
Mark Thies (senior VP) $854,760
Dennis Vermillion (senior VP) $966,337
Marian Durkin (senior VP) $830,451
Karen Feltes (senior VP) $864,018
We Demand City Hall to un-do the ban on Wind Powered Generators that Avista's monopoly has created. We need freedom of choice and the power to have power!
This is not about the good hard-working people of Avista which is the majority of the working population there what I'm concerned about is how much profit did Avista make last year and how much did they give back to its community directly? this movement is about the greedy corporate CEO in the greedy piggish executives. Not about the hard-working people who are employed by this AND ALL monster monopoly's!
http://youtu.be/XronQdUjsa0Washington Water Power, now known as Avista, has been in the Spokane area since the... more
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There is a movement afoot; a movement that the common person is standing up to the big banks, politicians and big corporations. The Occupy movement is a visual display of this angst. However, there is a person who did the most and said very little. She didn’t protest or occupy. She just let her action do the talking.There is a movement afoot; a movement that the common person is standing up to the big... more
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Earlier this year, Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett made headlines by
publicly decrying the stark inequity between his own effective federal tax rate (about
17 percent, by his estimate) and that of his secretary (about 30 percent). The resulting
media firestorm has drawn welcome attention to unfair tax breaks that allow the richest
Americans to avoid paying their fair share of the personal income tax. But these inequities are not limited to the personal tax.
Our corporate tax system is plagued by very similar problems, problems that allow many of America’s most profitable corporations to pay little or nothing in federal income taxes.
This study takes a hard look at the federal income taxes paid or not paid by 280 of
America’s largest and most profitable corporations in 2008, 2009 and 2010. The companies in our report are all from Fortune’s annual list of America’s 500 largest corporations, and all of them were profitable in each of the three years analyzed. Over the three years, the 280 companies in our survey reported total pretax U.S. profits of $1.4 trillion.
You think you are angry now? Wait until you read this.
http://www.ctj.org/corporatetaxdodgers/CorporateTaxDodgersReport.pdfEarlier this year, Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett made headlines by... more
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asherp
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added this
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3 months ago
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An excerpt:
…the reason the Occupiers have changed attitudes in politicians, or at least become a nagging presence in the back of would-be-austerians minds, is a bluntly traditional reason. It is the same reason politicians have always responded to “street heat.” Politicians see a crowd, and count votes. Not just the votes of the people in the protesting crowd—the count two votes, ten votes, a hundred votes for every member in a protesting crowd. They understand people willing to undergo hardship—certainly people willing to make the awesome commitment to keep and hold public space—as people with the motivation to influence voters around them….
…If sustaining a physical presence in public space is your political goal, well, then we can be very, very happy. But that is not my political goal.
If figuring out nifty new ways for large groups to make democratic decisions is your political goal, then we can be very, very happy. But that is not my political goal. My goal is…economic justice.
Change, Occupiers, or die. Scare politicians. Systematically. Do politics—even if it means the messy of forming coalitions with the nasty organizations “that got us into this mess in the first place.” Human beings got us into this mess in the first place. And no one is saying we shouldn’t be working with them. Or if you are, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.An excerpt:
…the reason the Occupiers have changed attitudes in politicians,... more
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A homeless-themed party might sound like a good idea for a Halloween celebration. But what if it’s celebrated at a foreclosure law firm that handles mortgage issues for all the major banks and whose business actually leaves people homeless?
Unlike many costume Halloween parties, the black-humor masquerade has sparked overwhelming anger. Employees of Steven J. Baum, which represents lenders including Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, are being blamed for mocking the homeowners their law firm targets with foreclosure.
Photos from their annual Halloween Party were released by New York Times columnist Joe Nocera. He got photos from a former employee of the foreclosure law firm, who asked to remain anonymous because she “feared retaliation.”
“In an email, she said that she wanted me to see them because they showed an appalling lack of compassion toward the homeowners — invariably poor and down on their luck — that the Baum firm had brought foreclosure proceedings against,” Nocera wrote in his October 28 column.
In one picture, two Baum employees are dressed like homeless people, with fake dirt on their faces. One of them holds a bottle in a paper bag, and the other holds a sign around her neck that reads: “3rd party squatter. I lost my home and I was never served.”
Nocera explains that his source said that “I was never served” is meant to mock “the typical excuse” of the homeowner trying to evade foreclosure proceedings, he writes.
The other woman in the photo holds a bottle of liquor in a paper bag and pushes a shopping cart with a sign reading "will work for food."
There was also another photo showing a coffin with a picture of a woman whose eyes have been cut out. A sign on the coffin reads: “Rest in Peace. Crazy Susie.” Nocera explains that this is a reference to Susan Chana Lask, a lawyer who “had filed a class-action suit against Steven J. Baum and had posted a YouTube video denouncing the firm’s foreclosure practices.”
According to Nocera, the firm is already under investigation by New York’s attorney general, and it recently agreed to pay $2 million to resolve an investigation by the Department of Justice into whether it had "filed misleading pleadings, affidavits and mortgage assignments in the state and federal courts of New York."
In a statement released by Steven J. Baum, the company stated that Nocera’s column was “another attempt by The New York Times to attack our firm and our work.”
http://rt.com/news/foreclosure-firm-halloween-homeless-203/A homeless-themed party might sound like a good idea for a Halloween celebration. But... more
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For six years Overstock.com has waged a war to expose Wall Street mischief. We did not go looking for a fight, but our company was attacked, and we learned we were not alone: the same manipulation-for-profit tools that Wall Street had deployed against us had also been deployed against many American companies, harming job creation, innovation, and economic growth. We knew that if left unchecked and unexposed, Wall Street's games could ultimately damage U.S. capital markets.
So in 2005 and 2007 we filed two lawsuits. The first case was against a hedge fund (Rocker Partners) and hatchet-job-for-hire research team (Gradient Analytics), both with ties to Jim Cramer. The second case was against a group of eleven Wall Street prime brokers, culminating in Goldman Sachs. The hedge fund in question (Rocker Partners) hired famed lawyer David Boies, and the prime brokers showed up with an army of the most prestigious law firms in America. Our lawyers were Dore Griffinger, Ellen Cirangle, Jonathan Sommer and Catherine Jackson of Stein & Lubin, a small but excellent San Francisco law firm.
We won the hedge fund case against Gradient and Rocker, extracting an apology, a retraction and over $5 million in cash (it felt good to beat David Boies' firm). In our prime broker case, one of the Wall Street banks (Lehman Brothers) has gone under (two, Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch were sold at fire sale prices), and another seven paid us millions to let them out.
That leads us to the main event this coming March, when O.co will square off against Goldman Sachs and Bank of America subsidiary, Merrill Lynch, in a San Francisco courtroom. Recently, we uncovered evidence of collusive action between Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and other Wall Street bad guys, in a scheme designed to fool regulators and profit illegally at the expense of O.co. As a result of this, in December 2010, we moved to add a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act claim and requested treble damages, but the court denied our motion, though we firmly believe the conduct of Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch was "racketeering" and "corrupt." Nevertheless, we are moving forward: trial is scheduled to commence March 5, 2012. At trial we will hold Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch accountable and expose to public view a slew of illegal Wall Street practices, some of which, practiced in the broader market, have been responsible for the current economic downturn.
http://www.overstock.com/50257/static.htmlFor six years Overstock.com has waged a war to expose Wall Street mischief. We did not... more
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Fall to look like winter in Northeast this weekend
Tenn. protesters arrested for 2nd straight night
Bank of America revamping debit card feesFall to look like winter in Northeast this weekend
Tenn. protesters arrested for 2nd... more
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Under fire from President Barack Obama and some members of Congress, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said he is “incensed” by the public criticism of his company and argued that critics are ignoring the good work his employees do.
“I, like you, get a little incensed when you think about how much good all of you do, whether it’s volunteer hours, charitable giving we do, serving clients and customers well,” Moynihan said to BoA employees in a “global town hall” meeting last week, Bloomberg reports.
The CEO said that critics should consider the bank’s positive contributions before rushing to criticism.
“You ought to think a little about that before you start yelling at us,” he said, adding that critics ““usually quiet down pretty quickly when they start to understand the facts and figures.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/66979.html#ixzz1bzfVBfGS
THEY have no understanding of the real world... the "good all you do" - serving clients & customers well.. THAT IS YOUR FU@KING JOB! Don't act as if you are a do-gooder cause of that! My friend wrote once on a very cynical day for her, but it applies here and to the Koch's involvement with PBS & Ballet, and with donated POCKET CHANGE to foundations/think tanks that support the issues that help make them richer!!!!
"As far as a big corp having a "big" heart... a friend wrote: "I'll see your cynicism one step further, and suggest that the philanthropy is just cheap marketing for them. Branding themselves do-gooders so that the sheep will keep their bleating directed at other things. As to the crumb-licking Republican underlings, I think they're a pretty even mix of people who just live for the impossible dream of joining their ranks and true believers."Under fire from President Barack Obama and some members of Congress, Bank of America... more
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B of A announced that they will charge $5 debit card fees for customers having less than $20,000 in savings or investments with B of A, up from $5,000 they originally had planned.B of A announced that they will charge $5 debit card fees for customers having less... more
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This story from Bloomberg just hit the wires this morning. Bank of America is shifting derivatives in its Merrill investment banking unit to its depository arm, which has access to the Fed discount window and is protected by the FDIC.
This means that the investment bank's European derivatives exposure is now backstopped by U.S. taxpayers. Bank of America didn't get regulatory approval to do this, they just did it at the request of frightened counterparties. Now the Fed and the FDIC are fighting as to whether this was sound. The Fed wants to "give relief" to the bank holding company, which is under heavy pressure.
This is a direct transfer of risk to the taxpayer done by the bank without approval by regulators and without public input. You will also read below that JP Morgan is apparently doing the same thing with $79 trillion of notional derivatives guaranteed by the FDIC and Federal Reserve.
What this means for you is that when Europe finally implodes and banks fail, U.S. taxpayers will hold the bag for trillions in CDS insurance contracts sold by Bank of America and JP Morgan. Even worse, the total exposure is unknown because Wall Street successfully lobbied during Dodd-Frank passage so that no central exchange would exist keeping track of net derivative exposure.
http://tinyurl.com/3ovf6zeThis story from Bloomberg just hit the wires this morning. Bank of America is... more
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LOrion
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added this
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4 months ago
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As hundreds of people remain encamped on Wall Street in New York City, and thousands of people across the country are taking part in a 99 Percent Movement aimed at battling economic inequality spurred on by enormous income gains by the richest one percent of Americans.
One of the financial institutions being targeted by protesters is foreclosure mill and government bailout recipient Bank of America (BOA). In Boston, thousands of people marched against BOA’s greed and in Los Angeles, numerous people were arrested while staging a sit-in at a local branch.
While many Americans may feel powerless against this banking behemoth, the truth is that Americans have a simple way to protest its greed and corporate malfeasance: simply move your money out of the bank to one of its competitors, such as a local credit union. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) recently encouraged Americans to do just that.
ThinkProgress has assembled five reasons why American consumers could consider moving their money and striking a blow to this abusive banking giant:
1. Bank of America Just Unveiled A Shocking New Debit Card Fee: Late last month, BOA announced that it would start charging a $5-a-month fee simply for consumers to use their debit cards for purchases. Although a few of its competitors have started using similar fees in recent times, BOA’s presence as America’s largest banking chain means that if it successfully enacts such a fee, it may be able to set a trend in the industry to make such charges the norm. More than 137,000 Americans have signed an online change.org petition protesting the fee. Most credit unions do not charge for using one’s debit card, and one credit unions, Delta Credit Union based in Atlanta, is even holding a “Switch Day” to encourage BOA’s customers to switch over to its services instead.
2. Bank of America Has Spent Millions Lobbying To Gut Reforms With Your Tax Dollars: Despite being bailed out to the tune of billions of dollars by the federal government, Bank of America has still had the gumption to spend millions of dollars in Washington battling new reforms meant re-regulate the financial sector. It spent nearly $4 million hiring a double-digit number of lobbyists in 2010, mostly aimed at gutting legislation related to banking regulations. Meanwhile, it spent a million dollars on campaign contributions in the 2010 electoral cycle.
More @ link http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/679226/5_reasons_to_move_your_money_from_bank_of_america/As hundreds of people remain encamped on Wall Street in New York City, and thousands... more
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