Slashdot Mirror
Online Critics Decry Even More Wells Fargo Fraud Scandals (boingboing.net)
On Saturday author/blogger Cory Doctorow launched a new barrage of criticism towards Wells Fargo:
It's been a whole day since we learned about another example of systematic, widespread fraud by America's largest bank Wells Fargo (ripping off small merchants with credit card fees), so it's definitely time to learn about another one: scamming mortgage borrowers out of $43/month for an unrequested and pointless "home warranty service" from American Home Shield, a billion-dollar scam-factory that considers you a customer if you throw away its junk-mail instead of ticking the "no" box and sending it back.
$43/month gets you pretty much nothing: people who tried to actually use their AHS insurance found it impossible to get them to actually do anything in exchange for this money. Here's a quick Wells Fargo fraud scorecard: stealing thousand of cars with fraudulent repos; defrauding mortgage borrowers; blackballing whistelblowers; creating 2,000,000+ fraudulent accounts, and stealing millions with fraudulent fees and penalties.
Life Pro Tip: if you don't like banks, join a credit union.
$43/month gets you pretty much nothing: people who tried to actually use their AHS insurance found it impossible to get them to actually do anything in exchange for this money. Here's a quick Wells Fargo fraud scorecard: stealing thousand of cars with fraudulent repos; defrauding mortgage borrowers; blackballing whistelblowers; creating 2,000,000+ fraudulent accounts, and stealing millions with fraudulent fees and penalties.
Life Pro Tip: if you don't like banks, join a credit union.
The habit of having a "negative agreement" where you have to check a box and send back if you don't want a service is not legal in some areas.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I'm surprised that they're legal *anywhere*.
There’s no point in acting surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now What do you mean you’ve never been to Alpha Centauri? Oh, for heaven’s sake, mankind, it’s only four light years away, you know. I’m sorry, but if you can’t be bothered to take an interest in local affairs, that’s your own lookout. Energize the demolition beams.
I'm not entirely sure how this quote applies to the situation described in the article, but if we make the effort I'm sure we can find a way.
Or perhaps you're just one of the millions of people who've been screwed.
To go after these scams but then they would have to actually work for a living..
Why these recidivist fuckers aren't in jail ? Is that because they're WASP ? Is that because white collar crimes actually pay well ? Where the God damn fuck is justice in all of this ?
Sign a contract for service X, get unwanted service Y in addition slipped into the hundreds of pages of legalese. Who's going to refuse to sign mortgage papers over a $43/month bullshit charge? Especially if it's a contract of adhesion and you can't just cross it out? It's like crapware that comes preinstalled on a name-brand computer, they get a kickback for each install. Remember: it's not fraudulent fees and penalties, it's "innovative financial services."
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Kafka was an optimist. Things are worse than what's depicted in a Kafka novel. Douglas Adams came closer to reality combined with a huge dose of absurdity and irony.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
It has gone downhill since the 70's.
And it started with the end of the Apollo program.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Desjardins, the biggest credit union in North America has actually become worse than a bank.
Maybe you can be fine with a small credit union somewhere but the GP is pretty much right nowadays.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
It's neither legal not ethical for a company to"offer" services on an opt-out basis, but why does this rant focus on Wells Fargo (scummy though they also be)?
American Home Shield is not owned it operated by WF. It is owned by the same company that owns Terminix, Merry Maids, and some other brands. When you buy a house, the transfer is a public record in most places, and you absolutely will get a lot of junk offers from companies who have no relationship to any of the ones you used.
The difference is that they are owned by the depositors. Hence they are not subject to the same commercial pressures that regular banks are. Unfortunately most of the mutual financial organizations in the UK where destroyed in the 1980/1990's when the building societies converted to banks. During the financial crisis the building societies in the UK weathered the storm much better than the banks and demutilized former building societies did for example.
Where is it legal? Asking for a friend and his company with the amazing monthly paper clip delivery service that's just $999 a month.
That will be the narrative. Possibly. If Americans wake up and leave the banks.
Trump speeches sound like Vogon poetry.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Oh freddled covfefe,
Thy micturations are to me,
As plurdled gabbleblotchits,
On a lurgid bee,
...
...you guys need a set of rules as to what's acceptable and the will to punish those who don't follow them.
Requiem for the American Dream
"Here's a quick Wells Fargo fraud scorecard: stealing thousand of cars with fraudulent repos; defrauding mortgage borrowers; blackballing whistelblowers; creating 2,000,000+ fraudulent accounts, and stealing millions with fraudulent fees and penalties."
Lists of blatantly corrupt and illegal activities don't mean jack shit unless you do something about it.
And by do something, I mean shut them the fuck down, and throw executives in prison.
Since Greed N. Corruption took over as CEO of US Capitalism, Inc. that will never fucking happen.
How ironic that if any US citizen did this, it would be labeled terrorism. The fact that nothing is ever done only clarifies just how unethical and corrupt the Banking Industrial Complex has become.
We bought a house and the seller paid for a year of a home warranty service. So far, we have had plumbing snaked out, The garage door repaired, and our dishwasher replaced, free of charge.
you're an idiot conspiracy theorist who knows nothing about economics.
Shut the fuck up, idiot. "Economics" has been reduced to nothing more than trying to maintain a bullshit valuation of the US Dollar, which obviously is fueled by corruption.
It's not that people don't like banks. Citizens don't like having "do as I say, not as I do" demonstrated over and over again, especially when the end result is screwing over the 99% while the 1% get away with financial murder.
from a cowboy outfit?
As an interested spectator of this pie fight (if we're unlucky some of the pie might land here in Europe, or there may be some other collateral damage), may I ask where this 'warmonger' label comes from? I've heard it a few times before, but I don't know of anything about senator Clinton that can even be spun to justify that label.
With all the crap they've pulled, it's a miracle that the "Wells Fargo" brand is worth anything in consumer banking anymore. Any normal company would have rebranded/recolored itself long ago.
Actually, Trump wasn't really elected either. He was only "elected" because was not Hillary. Least of two evils and all that shit.
Life Pro Tip: if you don't like banks, join a credit union.
In the 1990's my credit union...
Changed my routing number to my social security number. This had two effects. My unused checks were worthless, and tellers would literally write my SSN on the back of any check that I deposited.
The credit union bounced a check for no reason whatsoever. They could not explain why the check was not processed, and promised to resolve the matter with the company that I had written the check to. Ultimately, they did not lift a finger to resolve the matter.
When confronted with these, and a list of other banking errors, in a response, the president of the credit union claimed that I had been a member for only a couple of years and could not have experienced all of those errors. I rendered copies of all of the statements going back more than half a decade. They were confused because they had changed the routing number twice.
As a final insult, they charged a $15 account closing fee. I have never done business with a credit union since.
Years ago I got mail from them regarding my credit card. I had been signed up for "Credit Defense", which WF charged some % of your monthly balance to put toward a pot that you could draw on should you be unemployed for a length of time. I didn't think much of it and didn't care because I didn't have a high balance.
Fast forward a few years and couple moves later and my balance was a bit higher. To top things off, this charge was getting between $50 and $60 every month, which was making payments harder. Basically my story was a lot like this guys. I called up WF, they told me to call this third party company. I call them "Sorry, I can't refund". So I broken record the assholes, "So send me to someone who can". A few people later and I can "file a complaint" or whatever their lingo was. They had to prove that I had signed a document allowing them to charge me. They couldn't, so I got refunded near $2k for my troubles. No bogus charges since.
If it weren't for having my longest running line of credit with them, I'd have walked into a branch, shredded my credit card and given them the two finger salute years ago.
Have you ever actually bought a house?
Typically you're in a room with a Realtor, who works for the seller, because the Realtor always works for the seller, that's who pays them (even if you think they're working for you), a real estate lawyer, who works for the Realtor, and maybe a seller, if its a private sale. There's a stack of papers about three inches high and you have to sign about fifty times and initial another twenty. The lawyer has set aside about twenty minutes to do all this and reading everything is impossible, not to mention it requires both a law degree and an economics degree to understand what's been written.
Wells Fargo for my mortgage for 10 years, AHS for about 7 years. I'm currently battling Wells against their attempts to foreclose on my home (for the second time) and I dumped AHS 3 years ago after I got a local consumer investigative reporter to contact them regarding fraudulent work their chosen AC contractor told me I HAD to pay for (new pad for a replaced AC unit when the old pad was fine, new wiring harness for same when the old was fine, etc). Wells had been okay with my incremental catch up payments for 6 months (I'm behind due to a recent divorce)...but last month I made the mistake of telling them I'll be current probably within 60-90 days...and 5 days later I got the "pay us now or we accelerate the loan to foreclosure by 8/23". I have the ability to do that so I will...but it pisses me off that a previously agreed upon plan was jettisoned when they understood that the late payment penalties are about to stop and they'll lose any legal chance to steal my home. Effing bastards. I can't recommend more strongly for any and everyone to avoid both these companies as if they were plutonium gonorrhea.
It's not because she is a woman. It is because she called half the country deplorable, laughed over the deaths of U.S. citizens, and then tried to cover everything up. Additionally, she flaunted the fact that rich and powerful people are above the law. Gender had nothing to do with it.
Not even a good disguise. Seriously.
Of course....
Requiem for the American Dream
That sounds pretty bad. In the UK, the buyer and seller each have their own solicitor. Typically, all communication happens via the two solicitors (which can sometimes involve long round-trip times) and anything that you're supposed to sign will be first read by your solicitor, who should point out anything that looks dubious.
The French system is much better. The estate agents work for the buyer and have a legal responsibility to them: they are liable for any costs incurred by the buyer that the buyer was not aware of up-front (which means that they have an incentive to have a surveyor look at any property that they're selling and ensure that they have records or pointing out anything important in it to the buyer).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
So which financial institution makes mistakes on your accounts now? Or did you start your own?
you're an idiot conspiracy theorist who knows nothing about economics.
If you don't know fraud goes unpunished at the highest levels of finance, you really haven't been paying attention. No conspiracy here, just the power of wealth and connections.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
It's as if people completely forget the BLM protestor who killed 5 cops in Dallas.
You mean Micah Xavier Johnson, the man who was discharged from the military with significant evidence of mental illness? That the police murdered by killing him with explosives?
Good example. What exactly should we remember? That the Dallas Police defied all common sense in their practices? That multiple angry parties filed lawsuits in order to silence dissent and criticism? That you're still ignoring the deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, not to mention thousands of others?
Get rid of ALL forms of hate protestors.
It's as if people forget that you completely accused all BLM protesters of violence, just because you don't want to hear what they have to say.
She is a big time arms dealer (smuggler actually, that's what they're trying to hide about Benghazi, the weapons shipments to terrorists in Syria).
That was a CIA operation, more accurately. Maybe Clinton knew, maybe she didn't. It's always hard to tell with the CIA. But don't make it sound like it was her own personal operation.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Yes, I have bought dozens of houses. I am aware that it is a lot of paperwork. That is not an excuse to ignore any of it, nor it is an excuse not to have your own attorney thoroughly review them with you.
Reading everything is not impossible by any stretch of the imagination. If your lawyer only spends 20 minutes on it, you need to tell them that is unacceptable and make them read everything.
Making the largest purchase you'll make in your lifetime is not a time to be uneducated and complacent.
I was one of the folks that got a "free" credit card and another checking account as part of a mortgage I did with them upteen years ago. I learned about the credit card when I pulled my credit report for my next mortgage but learned about the checking account a lot sooner, because Wells Fargo tried to start dinging me for $6 "zero balance" fees after a few months. I told them to go stuff themselves, which took some time, but since they couldn't come up with the paperwork where I requested the checking account, they eventually dropped the issue.
But I would have almost forgotten to tell everyone I know to never bank with Wells Fargo if I didn't get my class action settlement check in the mail: "yessiree, that $0.21 of satisfaction over a decade after the hassle was ample compensation."
My son's school pictures arrangement is about like this too. Some company called Lifetouch contracts with the schools for school pictures. OK, no big deal, right?
If only...
So here's what they do. They herd the kids through the usual picture rigamarole and then a few weeks later, there is a proof image to look at and parents can decide which poses the want, right?
Oh no. Not at all.
A few weeks later, a full print set with all the usual sizes shows up in my son's backpack. A few 8x10s, some 4x6s, a bunch of wallets. Probably about the $25-30 package. Printed, ready to go, in his backpack. And Lifetouch puts a letter in there saying (paraphrased): "Hey mom and dad! Here are the wonderful pictures of your super cute kid! We already printed them for you, if you want to keep them just send a check back to the school. Or if you hate your kid and think he's ugly, send them back with a note to the teacher. Oh, and if you keep them and don't pay, we'll just kick your kid out of the photo line next year."
And not to mention what happens if you do send them back. Who knows? I bet they don't actually get sent back to Lifetouch. My guess is a pile of crisp 8x10 photos with all the identifying information a sexual predator would want printed right on the envelope goes straight into the dumpster.
I don't know what the whole Wells Fargo/AHS scam is, and $43/month sounds low for a home warranty, but I do have AHS (about $70/month) and they've replaced my A/C, pool equipment, and a refrigerator. So there may well be a scam going on, but I'm not sure it's fair to brand AHS a "scam factory" outright.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Bitcoin doubled in value over the last month; meanwhile banks pay one percent of one percent interest on savings.
I think he's leaving out details. The bit about charging small businesses for credit card charges: Businesses have been charged for credit card charges for decades. It's not new and it's not just Wells Fargo.
In regard to this 'American Home Shield' $43/mo thing - I'm guessing that when you sign up for a mortgage with Wells Fargo, this comes as part of the deal. If you don't reject it when signing paperwork, then you get signed up for it once everything is processed. So the act of saying "No" in the e-mail would be cancelling your service after you've already signed up for it. I'm too lazy to look into whether this is actually the case or not, but I really doubt Wells Fargo would do what Doctorow is proposing, when the thing I said is easy and safe (no legal messiness).
Don't get me wrong, some of the things they've done are bad. But you can't go grabbing things that boil down to "Well, did you read what you were signing?" Ever here someone say "That's how they get you"? This is what they're talking about. This is how they "get" $43/mo out of you for basically zero effort on their part. They're banking on the fact that millions of people won't read the agreement or care that an additional $43 is on their mortgage.
It is kind of a conspiracy because authorities agree not to charge bankers.
He was petty and vindictive and never cared for advice he didn't agree with
Sounds like a president we all know. I wonder how Hitler would of used Twitter.
Viewing / owning horse porn is legal in most places afaik. Making it isn't though.
When you are 1 of 1 million share holders in a credit union, you're not any better off than owning stock in your bank. Being owned by depositors does not necessarily make the institution more responsive to depositors.
I did not get AHS from a forgetting to check box, which is bullshit and Wells should be raked over the coals for that. I took the service when I purchased my place because of another friends positive experience with them.
But I have successfully used them for the 10 years I owned my home.
A/C issue in the heat of summer, multiple years, someone shows up in a couple of days and gets it fixed.
Washing machine rebuild.
Dishwasher fixed.
AHS hold a lot of weight with their contracted vendors. They tend to be higher quality than those I have found on my own. They don't screw around. I have no issues paying the monthly fee.
But Wells, who is my banker, should be raked over the coals for what they are doing.
I've had AHS for 5 years and I've always had a great experience. I've never had long hold times, been denied for service, or any other problems. I've had some expensive failures (Refrigerator had to have an evap coil replaced, furnace control board failed, and hot water heater failed), and they've always paid for the repairs, done so in a timely manner, and held up their end of the contract.
I'm not sure what the Wells Fargo contract covers (possibly not much?), but they've always provided good service for me. When my hot water heater's original heater burner failed (and I had flames literally shooting up around the hot water heater), they elected to replace the entire heater because the unit was old and was about to fail. That involved some significant plumbing changes to bring my house up to code--and ALL of it was covered by them.
Wells Fargo is scum, but I've had nothing but good experiences with AHS. Posting non-AC so you can tell that I'm not an industry shill.
-=Lothsahn=-
That it isn't just Wells Fargo doing this, it's all the big and regional banks doing similar tactics. From Chase, Bank of America, Citizens, Santander, etc. Some to a lesser degree of evil than others but they do it anyhow.
Why is that? Because they know they've managed to completely weaken any regulatory actions.
That purposeful denial of reality confirms my opinion.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
for a contract to be valid, both parties need to have a meeting of the minds.
quiet, trained seals need only to clap their hands.
It's not the gulf, it's the conflict of interest on the bank's part between its retail and investment activities, as illustrated by the sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2008. Even where they weren't technically gambling with depositors' funds, their investment activities put them in a position where they were in danger of failing while holding onto those funds.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
They can be legal if you previously signed an agreement agreeing to them. e.g. Credit card company changes its terms. Sends you a letter describing the changes and says by continuing to use the card you agree to the new terms. And if you don't agree to the changes, stop using the card and call them to tell them you're cancelling the card.
And bark. And balance balls on their noses, and play horns.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
It's because we as a society have decided that money is less important than people. On the one hand this means that a company owner isn't justified in putting workers' lives at risk just to make more money. On the other hand, it means the punishment for a financial crime is less than the punishment for physical crime. e.g. The majority of the punishment for bank robbery isn't because you stole money, it's because you threatened people with violence during the act of stealing money.
You can't have it both ways. If you want the punishment for financial crimes to be equivalent to the punishment for physical crimes, then you are saying money is as important as people's lives and physical well-being.
No, it's because she represented the same business as usual that's been giving non-urban areas of the country the shaft for the last couple decades.
I see that on just about any "free" software installation and update to get you to install extra "promotionware". Java still does it, last I remember. I suppose they can argue the "extra" product is not being charged for and thus does't fall under such statutes; and the boundary between product and "feature" can also be blurry. Still, it's an annoying practice.
The worse case I ever saw was a confirmation box with a double-negative, something like:
[_] I don't want to not install the ShinyMonkey Toolbar.
Half the users in the org ended up with the goddam ShinyMonkey Toolbar, which conflicted with other apps, causing job security and/or headaches for the help desk.
Table-ized A.I.
may I ask where this 'warmonger' label comes from?
Officially started when she voted for the Iraq war in the senate. She has always been pro war in every theater (including Syria) before and since. She is a big time arms dealer (smuggler actually, that's what they're trying to hide about Benghazi, the weapons shipments to terrorists in Syria).
And she's a regular machine politician, of the same kind as Richard Daley (both) in Chicago.
Thank you for the reply, but based on the facts in your motivation the label 'warmonger' could be applied to a large majority of US politicians.
The 'machine politician' label seems to be off topic, and is again something that I have never seen any rational substantiation for.
I had AHS for a few years. They always came out promptly when I called, and did the repairs. The problem was that they always found "non-covered expenses" that ran up my bill into the hundreds of dollars, instead of the claimed $50 co-pay. Examples included coolant evacuation and recharge for $400, and a concrete condenser pad for $150. When my condenser went out, my total non-covered expenses were $900!
Later, when I dumped AHS and started paying for my own repairs, I discovered that my A/C contractor didn't even charge me for these same "non-covered expenses"! At one point, my new contractor replaced a condenser with a new one for $1,400, just 50% more than the replacement under the so-called warranty! The AHS contractors are paid so little by AHS that they have to find ways to make their money, so they come up with these nonsense extra costs.
If filming horses mating is illegal we've got a whole other set of problems to deal with ...
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Why do you say "no conspiracy"? I see no grounds for assuming that just because the wealthy and powerful aren't punished they aren't engaging in conspiracy. And there are certainly meetings which are very carefully not recorded. If there were a conspiracy, what evidence would you expect to see that isn't present?
It would be quite reasonable to say we can't prove there's an illegal conspiracy. Even that would probably depend upon who "we" was, however. It seems quite clear that Wells Fargo management was engaged in an illegal conspiracy...it's just that it was against their customers rather than against the government. Proving it, however, could be a different matter.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Which banks? What about banks?
Were you to say the basic principles that are behind banking are important to the working of economics, I'd agree. This doesn't mean organizations that seem to be run by gangsters are a good idea. This doesn't mean that the currently existing banks should be either liked or trusted. This doesn't mean that the current regulations are either just or reasonable. Etc.
I really like the idea of banks. It's just the implementation that seems a bit lacking.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
My main question is what is to stop a Credit Union from being just as dishonest and corrupt as a bank?
Not-For-Profit, is more of a Tax thing, then a change on how one does business. Except for Profit there is excess revenue, which could then be used for a lot of things, such as paying the CEO more money, or investing back into the organization. Finding loopholes to find a way to scam people to increase the excess revenue is just as bad as a company finding a loop hole to scam people to increase profit.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
While I completely agree that opting in / choosing add-ons must be left to the home owner, I have had vastly different experiences with AHS than many folks here, apparently. I had a new home built in Texas around 2005 and chose to add AHS to my home mortgage bill. They initially gave me a $25 copay amount for parts and labor which went up to $75/incident a year later. I lived in that house for 11 years and used AHS several times a year in that time to repair my A/C compressor, replace a water heater, snake plumbing lines, replace a built-in microwave, repair a washing machine, address in-house plumbing leaks and more. AHS more than paid for itself albeit not every claim was fully paid. This is in stark contrast to the home warranty I obtained with the purchase of an older house in Alaska a year ago. It came Choice Home Warranty for 2.5 years and features a $40 copay. I've tried to use them about a dozen times and they've only paid a couple of claims. In every case the home warranty paid little to nothing and extended the outage of each issue. AHS was great, by comparison. Your mileage may vary. I concur with previous posts and comments recommending a small nest egg for home repairs.
When you put your money in the bank, they just don't lock it up. Awaiting for you to take it out. They invest it, they will use your cash to give people loans who pay it back with interest (where the old fashion savings account gave you a little bit of it). Banks do have FDIC insurance, so if those investments fail, your personal savings up to $100,000 is protected. But when you put your money in the bank, it isn't your money, it is the banks, to do what they want. As an agreement you are allowed to take the equivalent values back.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
That's all political speeches though.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Whether it's a benefit or not depends on a lot of things about your life situation. A mortgage can be worse than rent. You can get out of rent in a month or two. But it can also be a lot better. I don't regret the time I spent as a renter before ending up with a house. Now my situation has changed again, and I'm going to go back to being a renter. I'm not really pleased, but I'm not upset about THAT aspect. (I really don't like home maintenance or gardening, or any of the other things that make a house vastly superior.)
OTOH, rents in this area have skyrocketed during the period when I was living in a house. Renting now would be a much worse deal...but then the prices of houses have also climbed a lot. So I'm going to need to leave the area.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The problem is the banks, don't like normal citizens. With penalties on being too poor (High Interest Loans, too small of a balance, overdraft fees, etc...) If you try to get out of the bank they charge you for leaving the bank. As a citizen and getting dinged for trying to survive, they may not like these banks.
If you had millions of dollars in the bank, they treat you like gold, give you low interest loans, greater interest on your account....
Yes I understand the millionaire is a lower risk, so they get these perk, because the chance for reward is so high. However ethically it is bad.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
So which financial institution makes mistakes on your accounts now?
I hear good things about The First National Bank of Serta.
There are also less established institutions offering innovative solutions to the financial industry.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Where IS it legal?
And how much did they have to bribe the corrupt state legislature to make it legal?
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Of course the majority of US politicians are warmongers. Have you seen our military budget? Let me ask you a question: when was the last year the US was not involved in a war? But Hillary is especially war like. She considers Henry Kissinger to be a close, personal friend and mentor. I assume you've heard of war criminal Henry Kissinger.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You're talking in vague, hand-wavy analogies here. What's actually going on is the banks are creating an obligation (to you) in exchange for liquidity. The bank then converts that liquidity into productive assets (loans and investments), subject to the requirement that they retain enough to service likely account demands in the near future.
And either way, it doesn't mean that the banks can't be regulated. From the 1930s to the 1990s retail banks couldn't undertake certain risky businesses that might jeapordize their ability to meet depositor obligations. That was changed by a law signed in 1999 by Bill Clinton, and ten years later the mix of retail and investment banking contributed to a crisis that almost brought down the world economy.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I'm fine with the horse porn, thank you, but you can't make me deny the Holocaust! That's filthy.
No. The third bomb (earmarked for Tokyo) was the last one for which materials could be put together for to make in August. Output during September was projected to produce another 3 bombs and then the same in October.
Three per month is especially bad when you consider that, after the very beginning of the campaign, the military on the receiving end would have learned the critical importance of shooting down otherwise insignificant-looking air formations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Hitler was appointed, not elected. Hitler was never elected. I have no idea why this myth continues to be parroted. Read a book!
Seriously, use Google. Hitler wasn't elected.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I pretty much use "free" software, exclusively. I never see any such thing. ;-)
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Although Wernher von Braun and pals were a great help, your statement is mostly false. The father of modern rocketry is Robert H. Goddard, an American.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
>> self-dentify
A real knuckle-biter.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
You're using jargon. GP is more understandable.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Keeping any account open costs a bank money. They could pay everyone the same interest rate and charge a single monthly fee on every account, but I'd guess they wouldn't get much business that way. What they do is equivalent, but more palatable and more conducive to getting customers to keep more money in the bank.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Compared to banks, credit unions are more likely to be run by amateurs who will allow stupid mistakes. For instance in about 1980 the Litton Employees Federal Credit Union did not charge a fee or interest for 45 days on credit card cash advances. You could get a cash advance, deposit it in your LEFCU interest-paying savings account, pay off the advance in 30 days or so, and thus make a little money. It took LEFCU a couple of years to figure out their blunder.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
He managed to lose the air war which he needed to win if he expected to produce enough for the domestic markets and the war.
Yet he did come very very close to win the battle of Britain. So close, yet so far. So it goes.
Actually, if you look at how the actual Battle of Britain played out, it took quite substantial military genius on the part of the Reich to wrest spectacular defeat from the jaws of victory in that particular case. If the German side had kept their cool and done what was logical, the RAF would have been history. Instead, they whittled their resources on petty destruction of civilian targets, and lost focus. Which was of course in character for the bunch of mindless fascists they were, but still, military genius this ain't.
Mind you, that particular clusterfuck was more Göring's work than Hitler's - but still. Dunkirk and BoB were prime examples of amateurs losing sight of what they originally set out to accomplish. Basically, the invasion of France earlier had worked only because it was led by professionals, and was over before Hitler could intervene. And also because the French military leadership made it rather easy for them, of course. Which the Brits did not.
Duh, that was because the war in Europe was over by the time of the Trinity test. To suggest had the war in Europe still been raging that the use and distribution of atomic bombs would have been the same is utterly preposterous.
As for shooting down insignificant looking air formations by 1945 both the German and Japanese air force was so degraded that shooting down insignificant air formations was not possible. The raid over Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not have a fighter escort because one was not needed.
Even taking that out of the equation the allies could just have put up a P45 air escort over Germany and/or done the bomb raid at night.
The point remains the German's were fucked because of the atomic bomb. That it's use in Europe was not require does not change the fact that nothing the German's could have done would have helped them.
Hitler wasn't that bad. It wasn't so much that he was an idiot in military affairs as that his generals were idiots about the overall situation. They thought that the correct thing to do, when losing the war, was to negotiate terms, accept an unfavorable peace, and rebuild. Hitler knew that was not going to happen.
Therefore, Hitler was only interested in winning, and his generals were interested in losing slowly when things went bad. As things got worse, Hitler had to call for more and more extreme action, since doing something crazy might possibly succeed and win the war, while doing something that looked right would not win the war. Superweapons might not win the war, but by the time they were coming into play the ordinary ones clearly weren't. As long as the war was going well, he put a moratorium on their development. Moreover, Hitler could not trust his generals, since after about mid-1943 they were at cross-purposes, so he couldn't believe them. Does this retreat lead to a potential victory, or is it just going to lose slow? Can I trust this general in a position of power?
The whole idea of the war, besides killing Jews, was Lebensraum in the East, which meant he had to defeat the Soviet Union. (He was also fanatically anti-Communist.) The initial attack was extremely successful, far more effective than the years of fighting on the Eastern Front in WWI, which caused two revolutions and forced the Russians to accept pretty much what terms the Germans wanted to impose. However, the Soviet Union was far more resilient than either the Tsar's government or Kerensky's provisional republic, which was hardly obvious at the time. Delaying by a year would have given the Soviets time to train and equip the forty tank divisions they had facing Germany, and the attack would have been far less successful.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Three nukes a month would have devastated Germany in short order. It would have been difficult to get the bombers in after the first couple, but it might not have been necessary, and the Allies would find ways to get the bombers through. They could send formations of B-29s if they had to, expecting to lose some to the detonation.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
When thinking about the Battle of Britain, you have to realize that this was the first battle of its kind ever, and the Germans were seriously limited in finding out what was working.
First, they attacked radar stations, and the British found that keeping the stations transmitting was a whole lot easier than keeping them working. Second, they attacked the air defense system. This was working, but the Germans didn't realize that. Then they switched to cities, like all the prewar theorizing had suggested, and the RAF could recover.
If they had defeated the RAF, the RAF would have pulled back from southern England, and kept its tactical forces ready to intervene in case of an invasion. Any German invasion would have failed horribly. The Germans could possibly get enough forces ashore (although that's really iffy) but never could have supplied them. By then, the British Army had strong formations, although most were underequipped.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I'd bet that Wells Fargo owns a lot of mortgages it didn't initiate. There's plenty of companies that specialize in arranging mortgages and then selling them immediately. My contract is with one of those, not with Wells Fargo, so denying special Wells Fargo treatment, even with lube, is not violating any agreement.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
If you don't like the whole idea behind the banking system, that's one thing. If you don't like individual banks (or even most banks), that's another and more rational stand. There's a difference.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Most Senators voted for that, as I recall. That was based on misleading information provided by the Bush administration that made the war appear urgent and necessary. (By the "administration", I mean the White House staff, not the Cabinet, which was kept out of it.)
Benghazi was about the Republicans voting insufficient money for security and blaming Clinton for it. If the Republicans wanted to bring up arms dealing, why didn't they investigate it? If they wanted to keep it quiet, why keep investigating Benghazi? As far as I can tell, you aren't making sense.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The credit union has the ability to change things going forward, and you have the ability to accept that or find another provider (or try to negotiate the changes you don't like - that sometimes works).
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The habit of having a "negative agreement" where you have to check a box and send back if you don't want a service is not legal in some areas.
Just like something being unconstitutional, it is legal if it is not enforced.
Libertarian columnist Vin Suprynowicz once wrote an article (this had to be in the early 1990's or before) in which he labelled them as "Wells Fraudo". I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same.