Friday, January 14, 2011

WELLS FARGO - A BANKSTER CRIME WAVE

BUT HEY….. WE DID INCREDIBLY WELL BY CREATING A SOCIALIZED (LOSES) NO-STRINGS WELFARE STATE FOR BANKSTER CRIMINALS ON WALL ST…. Why flip off Main Street now?

HERE’S A CASE WHERE A RICH BANK GOT RICHER WITH OBAMA SOCIALIZED WELFARE FOR BANKSTERS: The Case of Wells Fargo… LA RAZA DONORS AND BANKSTERS TO THE MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS!


“Wells Fargo said last month that first-quarter profit jumped 53 percent from a year earlier as borrowers rushed to refinance mortgages amid record-low interest rates.”

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Lou Dobbs Tonight
Monday, November 12, 2007

Mortgage giants Wells Fargo and Bank of America are accused of slapping dubious fees on homeowners struggling to save their homes. With fewer new mortgages being written, these
companies appear to be leaning on these lucrative fees to stay profitable—with devastating consequences for homeowners.



MORTGAGE CRIMES

WELLS FARGO last week was presented with a “shark of the year award” by Minesota ACORN for its predatory lending. According to ACORN, WELLS FARGO uses fraud and deception to trap homeowners into mortgages with high interest rates, excessive fees, and harmful terms. ACORN has filed class actions suits all over the country against WELLS FARGO to stop their predatory lending practices. “Wells has gotten away with unfair, abusive, and illegal lending in our communities for years,” said Illinois ACORN President Bea Jackson (www.ACORN.ORG).

A FEW OF WELLS FARGO’S MORTGAGE TACTICS:

— Promising low interests rates, and then charging high rates, even to borrowers with good credit.

— Misleading homeowners into refinancing out of perfectly good first mortgages and into new loans which cost the borrowers much more.

— Financing large - and often hidden – fees into loans. Many borrowers were charged 7.5-11% of what they borrowed in fees. And since fees were added into their loans they continue to pay Wells interest on the money they borrowed to pay Wells itself.

--- Trapping borrowers with prepayment penalties which require them to pay thousands of dollars more if they want to escape into a better deal.

— Attempting to escape from any legal consequences of their actions by slipping mandatory arbitration clauses — which try to prevent borrowers from takin them to court — into virtually all of their high cost loans.

---- Making sure these “arbitrations” are heard by arbitrators that have received a great deal of money from Wells to find the “right” resolution.

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WELLS FARGO INSTANT CHECK

Department of Corporations Files $38 Million Suit Against Wells Fargo Financial; Instant Loan Checks Result in $871,000 In Excess Interest for Unsuspecting Customers

Business Editors
SACRAMENTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 10, 2003
The Davis Administration today announced that the Department of Corporations has filed suit in the Superior Court of Sacramento County seeking civil penalties of up to $38.8 million to stop Wells Fargo Financial California, Inc., a licensed consumer finance lender, from overcharging its "instant loan check" customers and to void their overcharged loans.

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WELLS FARGO – BANKSTERS TO THE MEX DRUG CARTEL… and where NO American need apply for a bankster job!

CA MORTGAGE LICENSE REVOKED FOR WELLS FARGO!

DEPARTMENT OF CORPORATIONS

The San Diego Union
By Craig D. Rose May 3, 2003
Wells Fargo mortgage license is revoked
State takes action over interest dispute


Citing a pattern of overcharging borrowers, state regulators yesterday revoked the mortgage lending license of Wells Fargo, but the bank will continue to make and service loans under federal jurisdiction.
The California Department of Corporations said Wells Fargo, the state's largest mortgage lender, has been charging consumers interest for days disallowed by state regulation.
"Wells Fargo charged consumers interest on their mortgages more than one day before being recorded, an admitted violation of California law," said Demetrios Boutris, state commissioner of corporations. "If Wells Fargo is not going to abide by California's laws, it has no right to California's licenses."

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WELLS FARGO – LA RAZA DONORS AND BANKSTERS TO THE DRUG CARTELS!

YOUR BANKSTER WELFARE CHECKS AT WORK!


HEY, ANYONE ACTUALLY BELIEVE FOX IS NOT IN ON MEX DRUG CARTEL MONEY? HE’S A FREAKING MEX!
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Wells Fargo, which owns Wachovia, immediately entered into a deferred prosecution agreement and paid the federal government $160 million in fines.

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Several other U.S. banks have also been discovered flouting money-laundering laws.

No wonder former Mexican president Vicente Fox, a conservative businessman, is
urging his country to legalize the production, sale and distribution of drugs
"as a strategy to weaken and break the economic system that allows cartels to earn
huge profits."

Calderon's military surge was backed by more than $1.2 billion in drug war aid from former President Bush, and by several hundred million more from the Obama administration.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/08/20/2010-08-20_mexico_drug_war_boosts_us_firms.html#ixzz0xaCMzkz0
Bloody Mexico drug war boosts U.S. gun shops, banks

Juan Gonzalez - News

Friday, August 20th 2010, 4:00 AM

Romero/ReutersMexican military has spent billions of
dollars fighting endless drug war, with little to show
but profits for banks and gun dealers in U.S.
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CRIMINAL BANKSTERS WELLS FARGO AT WORK:
“Major banks, led by Wells Fargo, US Bancorp and JPMorgan Chase, provide more than $2.5 billion in credit to large payday lenders, researchers at the Public Accountability Initiative estimated in a report released Tuesday.”
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Big banks bankroll payday lenders, study says
By Nathaniel Popper
Los Angeles Times
NEW YORK รข€” People who pay high fees to borrow from so-called payday lenders generally don't have bank accounts, but that doesn't mean banks aren't making money from them.
Major banks, led by Wells Fargo, US Bancorp and JPMorgan Chase, provide more than $2.5 billion in credit to large payday lenders, researchers at the Public Accountability Initiative estimated in a report released Tuesday.
The financing provides vital support for an industry criticized for charging effective annual interest rates that can top 400 percent, the researchers said.
"Not having financing would shut the big players down," said Kevin Connor, a co-author of the report and a director of the nonprofit research group that has been critical of big business.
Some major banks have shied away from doing business with payday lenders because of concerns about their practices or about the sector's image.
"Certain banks have notified us and other companies in the cash-advance and check-cashing industries that they will no longer maintain bank accounts for these companies due to reputational risks and increased compliance costs," Advance America, the biggest payday lender, wrote in a regulatory filing.
Citigroup says it doesn't lend to the industry. Bank of America has financed some payday lenders but tries to avoid doing so, applying a stricter-than-usual screening process when they apply for credit, bank spokesman Jefferson George said. "We have a limited appetite for doing business with them," he said.
Wells Fargo provided credit lines to six of the eight largest publicly traded payday lenders and also provided early financing to help the businesses expand, according to Tuesday's report
A spokesman for Wells Fargo said the company sought to provide equal access to credit for all "responsible companies."
"We exercise strict due diligence with payday lenders and check-cashing companies to ensure that they, just like us, do business in a responsible way and meet the highest standards," spokesman Gabriel Boehmer said.
"We put payday lenders through an additional level of scrutiny that other companies and industries might not have to go through," he said.
A JPMorgan Chase spokesman declined to comment, while US Bancorp did not respond.
Payday lenders typically charge $15 in fees for each $100 borrowed, fees that are charged each time a loan is rolled over for two more weeks. The Center for Responsible Lending, a Washington, D.C. -based research and lobbying group that has been critical of the banking industry, estimates that the average effective annual interest rates on these loans is 417 percent.
Uriah King, a policy specialist at the center, called the financing from big banks to payday lenders particularly offensive because banks have received taxpayer-paid bailouts and can still borrow at interest rates near zero because of Federal Reserve monetary policy.
Steve Schlein, a spokesman for the Community Financial Services Association of America, a trade group representing payday lenders, defended the industry, saying it helped struggling Americans.
"Payday-loan companies are in fact good creditors because their customers are good creditors," he said.
George Goehl, director of National People's Action, a community-organizing group and the study's sponsor, said banks that finance payday lenders should instead make that cash available to struggling borrowers as short-term loans at reasonable rates.

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Obama’s phony banking “reform”
27 April 2010
Debate on the Senate version of the Obama administration’s bank regulatory overhaul is expected to begin shortly. The House of Representatives passed its banking bill last December.
Neither bill does anything to curb the power of the banks or limit their parasitic and socially destructive activities. What the media is calling the “most sweeping overhaul” of the banking system since the Great Depression in reality sanctions the ever greater monopolization of the financial system by a handful of Wall Street giants, imposes no limits on executive pay, and allows the banks and hedge funds to continue gambling on exotic and largely unregulated securities such as collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps.
The so-called bank “reform” is an exercise in mass deception—an attempt to placate popular hostility to the banks and provide the government with political cover while it continues to do the bidding of Wall Street.
The bills have been drawn up in the closest consultation with bankers and bank lobbyists. This collusion has been widely reported in the press and presented as a perfectly normal and acceptable fact of political life. The front-page lead article in Monday’s Wall Street Journal describes the intensive lobbying being carried out by billionaire investor Warren Buffet to alter the Senate bill’s provisions on derivatives.
Buffet, an Obama supporter, wants to exempt existing derivatives deals from collateral requirements in the current language of the bill—a change that would save him billions on his $63 billion derivatives portfolio. Both senators from his home state of Nebraska, one Democrat and one Republican, are championing his cause.
This is just one example of the web of corruption and bribery that extends from Wall Street to the White House and Capitol Hill. The banks have thus far spent $455 million lobbying Congress on the overhaul and handed out $34 million in 2010 election campaign donations, most of it to Democrats.
The circle of corruption includes the ratings companies such as Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, which blessed toxic subprime mortgage-backed securities with triple-A ratings in return for fees from the banks they were rating, and government regulators who move seamlessly from regulatory offices to lucrative posts at the banks they were supposedly overseeing.
The colossuses of Wall Street amass their huge profits by means of fraud and swindling. Over the past few weeks systematic accounting fraud at Lehman Brothers has been exposed and the Securities and Exchange Commission has indicted Goldman Sachs for defrauding its clients in the run-up to the subprime mortgage crash. This is only the tip of the iceberg.
Obama’s so-called reform will do nothing to hold accountable the criminals at the head of the banks and hedge funds or break up the financial behemoths that exert a stranglehold on the economy. Instead, it will set up a mechanism to institutionalize government rescue operations of big financial firms to protect the interests of bank executives, shareholders and creditors, ultimately at public expense.
The lawless and reckless actions of Wall Street CEOs have had devastating consequences for tens of millions of people in the US and around the world. The wreckage left in the wake of the financial tsunami of 2008 is registered in millions of lost jobs, home foreclosures, utility shutoffs, and rising hunger, disease and poverty.
With the help of trillions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts, the bankers are making more money today than ever, even as schools are closed, libraries disappear and museums and opera houses are shuttered. There is, the people are told, “no money” for jobs or basic social services.
There is plenty of money. The problem is that it is concentrated in the hands of a financial aristocracy. The immense concentration of wealth among these individuals is not only morally repugnant, it is a menace to society. It is the result of the plundering of the social wealth to feed criminal appetites, at the direct cost of the productive forces.
During the rise of American capitalism as an industrial power, the vast fortunes of the corporate elite, while achieved through ruthless exploitation of the working class, were associated with the expansion of industry and the production of useful products. That is not the case with today’s financial elite. Its wealth is amassed on the basis of financial manipulation and outright fraud, linked to the destruction of the social infrastructure and industry.
The Socialist Equality Party advocates a policy that proceeds from the needs of the people and society as a whole, not the personal fortunes of the bankers and big investors. We call for:
• The criminal prosecution of bankers and speculators whose illegal actions contributed to the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression. They must be held legally accountable and given appropriate sentences to prevent a recurrence of such practices.
• The expropriation of the wealth of the top bankers, hedge fund managers, traders and speculators. This would immediately free up several trillion dollars, money that could go to a public works program to provide jobs and rebuild the social infrastructure—schools, housing, clinics, libraries, cultural facilities, the energy system. This money could also be used to help provide relief to the victims of the economic crisis—to maintain full wages for those laid off, put a stop to foreclosures and utility shutoffs, provide full medical coverage.
• The nationalization of the banks and major financial institutions and their transformation into public utilities under the democratic control of the working population. This is a prerequisite for the rational and planned development of the economy and the allocation of resources to rebuild the social infrastructure, end poverty, raise living standards and overcome social inequality.
Only such a socialist program can break the grip of the financial aristocracy and liberate the productive forces for the benefit of society as a whole. It can be achieved only through the independent political mobilization of the working class against Obama, the two parties and big business, and the capitalist system that they defend.
Barry Grey
WSWS.org
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