Debtor's Revolt

This is an interesting video of a really pissed off woman who has legitimate gripes against the credit card industry, in this case focused on Bank of America. Ann is not alone in this. People with good credit have watched their interest rates skyrocket. I was told that 25% is now the new norm for people around this country who are in the same position as Ann. And it has nothing to do with riskier debtors accruing higher interest rates. The banks are trying to make up money that they lost already from increasing default rates, and to do that they are jacking up everyone else's rates to try and compensate for the lost revenue. But the only thing that they are accomplishing here is to push more and more people into the risk of default, thereby causing this whole thing to snowball. I applaud Ann in this video. All the major corporations have received taxpayer bailouts. In the environment that this government wants to operate - a Bailout Nation - let Ann and others default. It will only put the banks into that much more trouble. But at least they don't have to worry. Obama, Geithner and Bernanke will come riding in on their white horses with bags of taxpayer money and money created out of thin air to make sure that these banks retain some semblance of solvency. And in this environment, it is the only way that Ann and others like her are going to get the government to bail them out.

I had a battle with Citibank the other day. I had ordered something through Paypal, and accidentally had them debit my bank account rather than charge it on my credit card the way I wanted to. My bank account was low on funds. In the past this hasn't been a problem since Citibank would just dip into my $2000 line of credit that I had with them, their Checking Plus account. I would just pay the interest for using their money, and that was that. But when it happened this time, I was charged an overdraft fee of $10 alongside the interest rate for the credit. This was wholly new, so I decided to investigate, and since I was a customer for a long time and this infraction rarely occurred in the past, I thought that they might reverse the charge. Little did I know that I was going into a heated battle. I told them that I was never notified of the change in their terms, and they told me I was. I told them that little tiny words typed on a tiny slip of paper attached to my statement isn't really notifying me of change. They told me it was. I demanded to speak to a supervisor. The supervisor said the same thing. I demanded to speak to CEO Vikram Pandit. He told me that Mr. Pandit was unavailable. I instructed the man that Citigroup was now a ward of the U.S. government, that their speculation in Mortgage-Backed Securities hadn't paid off and that he and others like him deserved to burn in oblivion along with the rest of Citigroup for ineffectively managing their money. Instead it was my money going to bail them out and now they were getting my money again for a new overdraft fee that they never warned me about. I cursed and railed and wouldn't let the man hang up with me. This went on for a half hour. Finally he hung up with me. So I called and did it all again. Well, I didn't get my measly $10 back. But I got a lot of aggression out and felt better. In the end maybe those people I spoke with went home with a nasty twitch in their left eye from the added stress that I gave them. If so, it was a victory for me! Well, I closed my account with Citigroup and vowed not to ever let any of the bailed out banks get one more dime from me again. Instead I opened up an account with my local branch, Northfield Bank. And in the mean time I am in the process of paying off my Chase credit card and when that is done, I wont ever use it again.

Ann by herself can never hurt such international banks. But the result is ultimately satisfying. To draw a line in the sand and vow never to give one more dime to such a crooked institution, nay, a whole sector of finance, is in itself a worth while reward after being dicked around. And hey, maybe in the end Ann and others like her will have the last laugh.