Categories

Bank of America’s Countrywide: One of the Worst Deals Ever

New Orleans – In one of the many articles on yet another multi-$100 million settlement, one story, almost in an aside, stated that the purchase of Countrywide’s assets by Bank of America, was “one of the worst deals ever.”  The price tag for Bank of America has been billions.

This settlement with the Justice Department [...]

A Corrupt Credit Business Model Travels to Chile and Brazil

New Orleans Cred

ODECU of Chile

it card scams are the bad penny perfected in the United States that is turning up now elsewhere in the world.   These practices are not the foul play of bad actors as predatory lenders always claim, but intrinsic elements of corrupt, exploitive business models.  The economic success stories in [...]

Federal Reserve Blasts Wells Fargo with Largest Ever Fine

Maude Hurde leadin an action against Wells Fargo years ago

New Orleans I may still be under a gag order on ACORN’s final settlement with Wells Fargo, but who knows at this point and who would care now.  Wells Fargo was always about hard ball and hard bargaining, but when we moved after than [...]

Hope for Frances Gomez and Other Foreclosure Victims

New Orleans I have often quoted a line by a former Republican OMB director that we should “never suffer from premature certainty,” and given the disaster that banks, the Treasury Department, the Bush and Obama Administrations, and the servicers have made of the housing crises and its millions of homeowner victims, I almost hesitate [...]

H&R Block, HSBC, & the end of RALs

New Orleans Refund Anticipation Loans or RALs are a product that have preyed on lower income worker families since their inception and promotion by the big tax preparers, H&R Block, Jackson-Hewitt, and Liberty, as well as smaller fry who could get access to credit.  Negotiating with these companies could get depressing when I worked [...]

Debit Charges and Senate Hucksters

Dodd-Frank Bill

New Orleans The Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act called for the Federal Reserve to put an end to the debit card surcharge padding when that retailers were paying to banks and credit card companies, usually amounting to 44 cents a transaction.  New Fed proposals would cap the amounts at 7 to 14 cents, [...]

Laundry List for new Consumer Bureau

New Orleans After much sound and fury the Obama Administration seems to have slipped Professor Elizabeth Warren in through the side door of the White House to setup the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  It’s all confusing since the Bureau is squeezed between the Federal Reserve and Treasury Departments, and Warren herself has been [...]

Silver Lining on Home Equity Loans

New Orleans In some ways we all eventually come to grips with the fact that we are a “product of our raising,” as the expression down here goes and in the case of personal real estate and personal debts, I was my father’s son:  conservative!  When he retired after 38 years with an oil company, [...]

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