I read the article yesterday about Ann Minch, the woman who made a video to Bank of America telling them to go screw themselves after they raised her interest rate to 30%.
I wonder if she realizes, as some of the commenters pointed out, that she's a leech, a loser, and that it's people like her - the people who want everything for free and don't want to pay for anything - who are responsible for the economic mess we're in. That it's people like her who are personally to blame for the economy and financial industry in this country blowing up and causing the end of this great U S of A to collapse. Just like the those idiots who caused the mortgage crisis.
They spend like movie stars, live on credit, and use their homes like piggy banks to fill their enormous garages with SUVs, buy gigantic flat screen TVs, and decorate their bathrooms with gold plated bidets.
At least some of the people commenting seem to think that.
I know from personal experience what Ann Minch is like. I'm just like Ann - fed up.
Fed up enough to have told my story to the Huffington Post when the housing market crashed and my bank offered us a 13% mortgage and we were subjected to the ludicrous comments by sanctimonious morons who didn't bother to read the article. Cowards who make blanket anonymous statements and have the luxury of spending their day posting unfounded and slanderous lies. I wrote about that here.
How could anyone with a shred of intellect make a statement like "Believe the Founders" did when he said:
Pay off your debt and stop being a ****ing IowIife. Do you think that in your contractual agreement with BoA over your credit card, that there was nothing in there talking about fluctuating APRs? Are you out of your mind? You must be, since you were carrying a credit card debt of several thousand dollars when all you had in liquid assets is a pathetic, paltry five grand. Absolutely ridiculous.
Brain injuries are no laughing matter, but when does this end? How does raising someone's interest to 30% after they've done nothing but pay make sense to these rubes? How does gouging the very people who bailed them out after their incompetence caused the entire economy of this country to implode make sense? How can an argument for personal responsibility be made in this case?
This is not about honoring contracts. It's not about not wanting to pay a debt. It's about disgust. It's about getting kicked when you're down over and over again and seeing criminals get away with things that even loan sharks would be embarrassed to do.
It's about people making the same mistake and assumption that Alan - freaking - Greenspan did when he forgot the "scum bag" factor in his calculations.
Inevitably it doesn't matter if you diligently play by their elusive and incomprehensible rules while they hang the threat of raising your interest rate or destroying your credit over your head if you so much as sneeze or are five minutes late with a payment. Or that we would wake up one morning in a house that had lost 50% of its value overnight. They've managed to make an already unconscionable and unrealistic situation completely impossible.
The best of us had hope that when we bailed these ungrateful incompetent frat boys out they would do the right thing and that our government would make sure that they did.
Instead they've been allowed to spend millions of our dollars to lobby against the very rules and laws that would protect us.
Not paying your debt and letting your credit score tank seems un-American, but what these banks are doing is completely un-American.
That there are people in this country that would consciously choose to defend those actions is nauseating. Interesting though that many of their profiles show that they are capable of posting thousands of these comments. Makes you wonder what they do for work.
Protests, and underdogs, and David against Goliath? That's American.
As Minch says, "Tea parties and letters to representatives hasn't done squat. We need to form a cyber revolution."
Thank you Ann Minch for your courage and conviction. Thank you for giving me back some hope. At least for today.
Follow Richard Zombeck on Twitter: www.twitter.com/zombeck
Marshall Auerback: Risk of Major Social Upheaval Likely if Bank Bonanza Continues
Is a Democratic administration and a Democratically controlled Congress presiding over one of the most regressive wealth transfers in history?
Being fiscally responsible and never entering into debt (mortgage excluded) makes you a suspect person and companies give you a higher rate.
Being irresponsible and entering into debt makes you a great customer.
Then everyone gets surprised when debts are amassing nationwide...
The only thing banks will understand is a complete revolt. Stop paying your credit cards until they go back to the initial contracts you engaged in with them, maybe they'll get the hint that the American consumer is not someone who will take that abuse passively.
"Never a lender or debtor be..." William Shakespere
The only debt I have is my house...and yes, I WAS smart enough NOT to get one of those adjustable rate mortgages back in 2006 ("you'd have to be INSANE to get one of those" I said to myself then) As a result, even with the "lower interest rates" the banks are offering right now, I know of only two other people that have a lower payment for a mortgage originated in 2006!
But I AM thinking of refinancing...
These days, many people have become so thoughtless and insensitive that they would probably blame that woman for her plight-- "you shouldn't have had kids you couldn't afford" or "you shouldn't have bought so much house". Blaming the victim certainly makes the person doing the blaming feel good, but that would not have kept the widow and her six kids in their home. The alternative was probably an orphanage. Should we punish the children by breaking up the family because their parents had too many kids? What exactly does that solve?
Unforeseen things occur in life, spouses die or leave, people get sick. Punishing the unlucky does not have any real deterrent value, it just make people feel helpless and fearful.
So have a heart folks. You never know when it may be your turn to need a helping hand.
In the case of a mortgage, the bank takes your promissory note, endorses it, and deposits it in an account--like a check. That's one side of the ledger.
Then they write out a "funding check" to the seller of your house. That's the other side of the ledger, and voila, it's all balanced out. The bank neither took any risks with its own money nor actually loaned any money at all.
Consider this:
1. The deposit of your promissory note into an account in the bank allows the bank to make loans at least 9 times the amount of the note. It's a cute little system known as "fractional reserve banking."
2. The bank then sells the note on the "secondary market" for the face value of the note plus a few percentage points more. This is done with the vast majority of mortgage notes (credit card agreements and student/auto loans as well).
So your signature makes a killing for the bank/"lender" whether you ever make the first payment or not. All they're concerned with is getting the interest out of you, because that's the third income stream for them from their "loan." Why else do you think they make you pay the interest first?
A cartoon that explains this can be found here:
http://eggsistense.com
I just don't see it written anywhere in the Constitution or Bill of Rights that we are guaranteed access to cheap money at any time of our choosing. You make your own decisions in life and should live with the consequences of those decisions. Banks pretty much have the right to charge whatever rates they choose if that's what is written into the contract you sign. Ignorance of terms is no excuse - if you don't understand something, why would you even sign it? You wouldn't sign the same agreement if a random person came to your door, so why do you expect a bank to be any different?
Hold on to your aluminum foil hat grazzt, but 13% of 400k is a helluva lot more than what your mother was paying. And how do you think the houses got that expensive? The same magic fairy dust that helped you buy a Gremlin?
I've had medical bills resulting from no insurance while working a minimum wage job and I've had the ensuing credit card debt. I've had my interest rates raised. And you know what I did? I paid it off. Didn't like it, but that is the agreement I made.
Since when does theft equal civil disobedience? She's not even suggesting paying what she actually spent and refusing to pay the interest; she wants to get away with paying nothing. Theft, pure and simple.
And when you were paying 12% on a debt and they raised it to 30% - on the existing debt, not the future debt, did you just pay it off because that was the right thing to do? Do you think it's fair that you're charged one rate while you're spending and then the rate is raised after the fact?
It's all just fine until something like this happens to you. But it never, ever, ever will, because you'll never lose your job, your savings, insurance, income, family, health or home because you have absolute control over every variable your world. Right?