I talked to my small town bank president today...

[Manifestor_of_Light]

She is a lady who is about 75. This bank was bought by a chain, but it's not part of a mega-chain like WaMu or BoA.

I told her that I was hoping that lots of people would be put to work with the stimulus bill. She agreed and started telling me about the Civilian Conservation Corps, which was one of FDR's New Deal Programs. We discussed the fact that the Works Progress Administration built major projects all over, like courthouses, post offices, the Oakland Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge, Boulder Dam, etc.

She agreed with everything I said about putting people to work! She agreed that we need a middle class and a working class with jobs.

My theory is that local bankers who are being fiscally responsible are not in the same universe as the banks who bought bundled junk mortgages and don't even had proper paperwork and abstracts of title and such. I was amazed when I read that these bundled mortgages don't have a paper trail.

That is such basic contract law that I am floored. If you sell real estate or rent it, you do not have an enforceable contract unless it's in writing and specific as to the terms.

:wtf:

[DS1]

1. I dumped Bank of America for charging me BS charges a few weeks ago

And now bank at a local bank. I love it. They have all the online banking stuff, automatic payments, etc, but they won't put me in a different plan in order to fuck me like Bank of America did.

I felt really good making that switch, I still do. They even have one of those old-timey coin counters, which of course doesn't take 8.9 cents on the dollar.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

3. I wish the credit card companies would charge such low rates.

I have a HELOC on one of my houses, preparatory to selling it, and I think my interest rate is 5% or something.

[Muttocracy]

11. I helped my mom get her accounts out of BofA after they made some mistakes

and stupid interactions. They applied a credit card payment to the wrong card (her second card company had been bought by BoA so she ended up with two under them). They claimed to be unable to apply a credit card payment via interacting with humans at the local branch. Other dumb stuff.

I got my debt away from credit cards and into installment loans at local banks and credit unions and helped her do the same.

[shireen]

2. i hope small town banks are the trend for the future

a local bank with roots in the community has a better chance of surviving because they are directly accountable to their community, and are directly invested in them. Big chain banks don't feel the same sense of responsibility to their customers.

[FreakinDJ]

4. Too Bad they didn't put more Infastructure in the Stimulus Bill

I was very disappointed they didn't and think it was a very careless exspenditure of Obama's political capitol not to have

[Viva_La_Revolution]

5. Was just talking to my Grandma about the CCC last week...

Her dad was employed by them too. Saved the family, 6 kids.


I learned when working for an alarm company several years ago who would purchase blocks of accounts from other monitoring co's... if you have any kind of dispute with any company, request a copy of the signed contract! If they can't produce it, you owe them nothing.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

9. Nearly all contracts have to be in writing to be enforceable.

It's called the Statute of Frauds.

It's always a good idea to have contracts in writing. They are a lot harder to prove in court if they are oral.

[aquart]

6. Because the bundles were a scam.

They weren't complex. They were fraudulent.

[BeatleBoot]

7. My Dad was in the CCC's

And most of his brothers (my uncles)

Mostly planting trees in the U.P. of Michigan at the time

Then came the War.

Michigan has a great Civilian Conservation Corps Museum.

[Hello_Kitty]

10. I hate to say it but I kinda dig Norm Coleman's long freak flag hair in that pic.

What happened to him? :shrug:

[Muttocracy]

12. He switched parties while he was mayor of St. Paul, right? guess he thought it was a good move? nt

[Sarah Ibarruri]

8. I bank at Citibank (yeah I know... ), but anyway.. today I went to see my IRA guy.....

and he and I got into a discussion about everything that happened. He said that between him and me, the bankers destroyed the economy with the blessing, approval and keys of the Republicans. They opened the door, and stood WATCH while the bankers looted us. He said if not for the Republicans, the bankers would not have been able to bring this country to its disastrous standing. He's angry. He's very angry.

As I walked out, I looked at his bookcase, and on top of it was Barack Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope.

:toast:

[Muttocracy]

13. Ralph Nader has an article on credit unions that my local one linked on their blog

I think Nader has lost his mind of late but this is a good article

http://www.counterpunch.org/nader02232009.html

February 23, 2009
The Cooperative Model
How Credit Unions Survived the Crash

By RALPH NADER

"While the reckless giant banks are shattering like an over-heated glacier day by day, the nation's credit unions are a relative island of calm largely apart from the vortex of casino capitalism.

Eighty five million Americans belong to credit unions which are not-for-profit cooperatives owned by their members who are depositors and borrowers. Your neighborhood or workplace credit union did not invest in these notorious speculative derivatives nor did they offer people teaser rates to sign on for a home mortgage they could not afford.

Ninety one percent of the 8,000 credit unions are reporting greater overall growth in mortgage lending than any other kinds of consumer loans they are extending. They are federally insured by the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) for up to $250,000 per account, such as the FDIC does for depositors in commercial banks.

They are well-capitalized because of regulation and because they do not have an incentive to go for high-risk, highly leveraged speculation to increase stock values and the value of the bosses' stock options as do the commercial banks.

Credit Unions have no shareholders nor stock nor stock options; they are responsible to their owner-members who are their customers.

...

Credit Unions, Schenk says, are "portfolio lenders. That means they hold in their portfolios most of the loans they originate instead of selling them to investors, so they care about the financial performance of those loans."

...
"

http://www.counterpunch.org/nader02232009.html

[Muttocracy]

14. My local banks are doing very well.

They were conservative about lending and aren't having a crisis, all of which has helped make the local real estate market a little more stable.

They've been buying up Bank of America and other big-chain branches and rebuilding or expanding them.

One of my local banks just released summary figures for 2008. From Dec 2007 to Dec 2008, their assets are up 6%, loans are up 11%.

Another one wrote that they declined to participate in TARP because they're doing fine on their own and don't anticipate having problems raising capital.