(9 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
In these insane years, the only people making sense, and the only people with what appears to be what used to be called “common sense” are those who are now labelled “extreme left”. You know, Democracy Now, Dennis Kucinich, etc.
Well, Kucinich now can’t help but wonder if the Federal Reserve isn’t paying banks to NOT make loans.
It makes a lot of sense.
http://rawstory.com/08/news/20…
Ohio Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich wants to know: “If [the Troubled Asset Relief Program] isn’t about keeping people in their homes or providing credit to businesses, what is it for?”Expressing his frustration before the Government and Oversight Committee, the two-time presidential candidate suggested that the Federal Reserve may be paying banks to hoard money and avoid making loans.
Banks make loans in order to make money. If they don’t make loans, then what are they in business for? Why would they quit making loans?
I have anecdotal “evidence” backing this up. Recently I decided to get some professional retraining for some new technology in my field. The training is very expensive. The reason I’m getting the retraining is because the work in my field that I have been doing without this training has been drying up, and paying less, and I am in severe financial trouble because of it.
Retraining should fix things, right? Or at least put me on the road to recovery. I’m able to pay for the first couple of classes, but beyond that I need some financial assistance. So I apply for a student loan through Sallie Mae, and the school I’m going to has a deal with them so it’s all very simple.
My credit has been destroyed the last eight months because of my financial situation, which is the REASON I’m getting the retraining. The financial aid officer at the school tells me that to get a student loan you have to have a credit score of over 740. Now, even when my credit was pristine, I’m not sure if it was ever above 740. I know it was well over 700 before it tanked, but 740? Either way, it’s far lower than that now, so they tell me I can get a co-signor.
I approach a very close familiy member and ask if they could co-sign. They agree to do so. This family member has a credit score of 880, has had the same employer for over 20 years, owns a house that they have lived in for 25 years, has two kids, one in college, has the most straight-arrow type of financial lifestyle you can imagine, in short is the classic kind of person you want to lend money to. Right?
Wrong. She was turned down for the loan. Because of one late credit card payment to a Department Store credit card that she only took on because she was buying clothes for her daughters one day and the store said if you get the card you can get a 25% discount. The first bill got misplaced and she was late paying it.
They turned her down because of this.
So Sallie Mae is obviously looking for any excuse to not loan money.
Sallie Mae is a financial institution that only, theoretically, makes money by loaning it out and getting more in repayment through interest rates, right?
Yet they are deliberately turning down loans for the most tiny reasons they can find.
YET the Fed is telling us that we cannot audit them or they will destroy the financial world as we know it.
So what are they hiding?
Why are they hiding it?
Why do we all have to go down on THEIR SINKING SHIP?
I’m just trying to get retraining so I can get a new fucking JOB.
Ironically, the school which I’m using for this retraining, just got $250,000 from the Obama administration to give people training. The caveat? You have to already have a fucking job. That’s right. If you already have a fucking job you can get the retraining that I’m talking about.
If you don’t have a job? It’s fuck you very much. Die, asshole.
That’s what it feels like anyway.
I’m not seeing any light at the end of this tunnel. I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do when what little money I have runs out. I’m trying to get a job doing anything, out of my field, whatever, and there’s just nothing out there. I apply and hear nothing. My phone only rings with calls from creditors, banks who have gotten billions from TARP and are now hounding me for money I don’t have. Banks who have given their CEO’s tens of millions in bonus pay. Are hounding ME. Sure, I owe them money, yet the irony is not lost.
Yesterday I gave money to an unemployed guy outside of my post office. I’d seen him there many times, a very well-kept, well dressed guy who has taken to sitting in the same place every day, staring at the sidewalk and reading want ads. At first he said nothing, then finally he started mumbling a few words asking for help as you’d walk by. Yesterday he said nothing, but I stopped and said “what’s your story?” He said “I’m out of a job”. I said “me too” and I opened my wallet and gave him a few bucks.
I was angry. I’m still angry.
When do we say enough is enough? When do all the angry, unemployed people, with nothing to lose, rise up and deal with the banksters? When do we get angry enough to do something about the Goldman Sacks of the world, those who rob us blind, give themselves 700 million dollars per person in “bonuses” that they FUCKING have the gall to call “earnings?”
How much shit will we eat?
Here’s some food for thought, which I found at zerohedge.com:
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I am NOT a fan of Ron Paul, but he makes better points than the whole RW and the Blue Dogs combined.
WTF is with the FED?
Why shouldn’t they be investigated?
I am NOT a fan of Ron Paul, but he makes better points than the whole RW and the Blue Dogs combined.
WTF is with the FED?
Why shouldn’t they be investigated?
That people in the US ever will. I think they’re all convinced it’s their own fault when they get fucked.
Obama hired Summers & kept on Geithner, et al. while ignoring Stiglitz & the other economists who were, y’know, right about everything for the past four years.
Just sayin’. As for your situation…you have my sympathy. I’m barely making over minimum wage…it’s almost enough to pay my bills. Almost.
http://informationclearinghous…
Last night I decided to listen to what Obama had to say about heath care, so I tried to listen to his presser without preconceptions. I kept thinking this makes no sense it’s just like the banks. These people have no concept of what it is like to live in the real world. I mean the basic day to day world of working people. He talked of insurance reform nothing about real access to health care at all.
They blame it on the Bushies, yet seem to take these policies to the next level. Mandating that we pay premiums and leaving it to the extortionist to ‘deliver’ the services. All his talk was aimed at an economy that does not exist. A corporate oligarchy that does not offer jobs, decent wages, or have any restraint, regulation or accountability to the well being of those in it’s grip. Just more power via the government to squeeze the last dime out of a populace that has no way to pay the vig.
Then someone asked about transparency, including the TARP money. He may be articulate but if you listen to what he is saying on all levels, political or morally or even just logically it’s just the run around. The run around that ignores the reality that tells me I’m going to save 6000$ a year from reforming insurance that I don’t have and can’t afford anyway. He says wall street and the banks caused people to lose their money and jobs but we must keep them profitable? The topper came when he talked of this sicko system being able to keep people healthy and in the next sentence of shopping for insurance. The reality being I either eat or buy insurance.
I have come full circle and now believe that we the people are on our own. The government will not legislate any programs or enforce any laws that protect us they will mandate that we pay money to entities that have no other goal then sucking the life out of the planet and the people who live on it. Where’s the reality, where do they think people will get the money to pay for the drugs and machines that go ping? Who can get a loan that actually needs it? This is a circle jerk that takes us right back to the path that led us here and calls it reform.
I was an “Auto Consultant” for Consumer Guide. It was really a fun job at a call center, just take calls from people looking to buy the best car for their needs, with enough money to buy something new (thus spend the extra $10K a new one costs and drops the moment it’s off the lot). Then sending them to one of ‘Our’ dealers for the “best deal” that really wasn’t.
Then CG contracted with some auto insurers, and we were given the unenviable task of having to explain to people why their insurer wasn’t going to pay what they’d contracted to pay after they got into a fender-bender. Of course, the insurers didn’t explain to us what we’d have to explain to the customers, they just hired us so their people wouldn’t be bothered explaining anything.
Just blanket “NO” to all. Now, we are all required to get car insurance if we have a car. That’s the law. But the insurers are NOT required to pay for anything covered in the contract you signed. Quite the scam there, directly imposed by their bought-and-paid-for legislators in every state of the union.
A mandate for health insurance without forcing insurers to pay will be exactly the same thing, make no mistake about it. It’s just guaranteed bonuses for them, guaranteed abuse for us.