Posted on 10/09/2012 8:54:11 PM PDT by TArcher
Walmart wants to be your new banker.
Walmart launched Bluebird, an alternative to debit and checking account. Should banks be nervous?
Today Walmart announced an alternative to traditional debit and checking accounts in partnership with American Express. The Bluebird accounts target consumers who are fed up with increasing fees from traditional bank accounts.
The Bluebird accounts will have no minimum balance requirement and no monthly maintenance, annual or activation fee. Customers can access their money for free using one of 22,000 American Express MoneyPass ATMs, but will be hit with a $2 fee if they are not enrolled in direct deposit...
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Except in the far hinderlands, mom and pop stores are archaic relics, obsolete.
Small businesses are archaic relics, obsolete?
“Firms with 1 to 4 employees (or with no employees as of Mar 12) 3,617,764 3,624,614 6,086,291 232,062,907 n/a”
http://www.census.gov/econ/smallbus.html
Evidently not, Bert.
>>I guess there’s now a special card for them.
Special card not covered by the special rules that Walmart lobbied for everybody else (including the small community banks and credit unions they’re helping the big banks to destroy) — ala the Durbin Amendment of the Dodd-Frank act.
major cities where WalMart is not allowed to sell groceries to us.
Interesting. What about CostCo? We like to buy in bulk from them.
I used to occasionally buy things at Walmart because they were near by and convenient; but my family's patronage of them ended when Walmart Lobbied for the Dodd-Frank/Durbin (D) treachery.
I also prefer Chik Filet over McDonalds because I believe in putting my patronage and $$ where my beliefs are.
I don't shop at Home Depot, either. I like Lowes because they havn't bent over for the homosexualists.
Costco is leftwing, I’m not aware of any city that blocks them, or any media or leftists that attack them.
I do love Walmart though, they are the working man’s store, great prices and savings for the family.
I hope they can take on the banks and save me some money and give me better service than the hostile banks do.
Costco is leftwing, I’m not aware of any city that blocks them, or any media or leftists that attack them.
"Costco: Message boy for the rabid right"
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/steve_duin/index.ssf/2012/08/costco_bookmobile_for_the_rabi.html
YMMV I guess.
>>I hope they can take on the banks
I hear you. But unfortunately the (D) Dodd-Frank/Durbin legislation Walmart supported and lobbied for is having the greatest effect upon the small community banks and credit unions -- not upon the Too Big To fail TARPed-over scum bags we'd ALL like to see brought to justice.
Yes, they charge ALL consumers higher prices to pay the CC fees of which I get a nice cut of, including those suckers who pay cash, checks and debit cards.
So those of us who are smart enough to use CCs are being paid by the suckers, and CCs are well protected against fraud and super convenient. Its a win-win-win
Occasionally a merchant wont take CCs or they charge a CC fee. But most take them for free because they are good for their business.
Well, when called on ‘stupid’, you just double-down like Obama, don’t you?
EVERY large business employs lobbyists.
You have still NOT demonstrated that Dodd-Frank was IN ANY WAY aimed at WalMart.
All you have done is wave your hands even more frantically, desperately trying to connect WalMart to this legislation.
Yet any store can easily do what they did. They are business-savvy. They are smart capitalists.
Clearly you are not.
You are only a troll. Tell me, when you are banned, and make no mistake, you will be — tell me, when you retread, will you come seek me out, as you have ansel12?
I hope you do.
>>EVERY large business employs lobbyists.
Is that conservative or just bidness as usual in the post-modern Amerikan CCCompany Store?
Your retort is reminiscent of the attitude of students described to me in a conversation I had with a physics professor from UCI a few years ago whilst we were serving on a jury together. He was flabbergasted at the amount of sophisticated cheating he observed among today’s students; and he told of how they blew off the amoral nature of what they were doing ala rationalizations such as “everybody does it” and “that’s what you have to do to compete”... and “EVERY large business employs lobbyists”.
“COMMERCE BETWEEN MASTER AND SLAVE IS [still] DESPOTISM”
—Thomas Jefferson
The purpose of American governance is to secure the inalienable rights of the governed against the predatory nature of those who would enslave them via the tyranny of their own appetites — NOT to facilitate their enslavement ala such atrocities as the Dodd-Frank/Durbin legislation.
First of all, having someone lobby for your cause is not 'cheating'. It is done in all venues in politics, and if you had even spent the SLIGHTEST amount of effort, you would have discovered that this nation's first lobbyist was William Hull, hired by Virginia veterans of the Continental Army... IN 1792!
And you skate right past the clear and deliniated examples I pointed out of your fact-free insinuations and baseless smearing, and your feeble attempts to create non-sequitur relationships -- preferring to NOT defend your points, but instead move on to a new one. You remain a troll.
In fact, If you threw in some weird chuckling and eerie guffawing, Free Republic might understandably mistake you for Joe Biden.
Is lobbying for legislation by (D)urbin, Fwank(D), and (D)odd, conservative?
You know what, troll? I was going to leave you be. Let you cut your own throat. Nope. I am on you now. I will absolutely work to see you banned.
Do you know why? Because you never answer my questions. You never address my points. You just move on to a new question.
I could easily answer, and dismiss this one. I will not. You refuse to answer me, I refuse to answer you.
You are Joe Biden in text form.
I will have your heart over my mantle.
From my lips to God's ears.
>>Because you never answer my questions.
Q: “WHO CARES if the Chinese are left or right?”
A: “Evidently none of the Quislings doing business with the Communist oligarchs in the CPC Central Committee.”
Next?
1) Show me solid evidence, per your inference, that Walmart actually lobbied on the Dodd-Frank bill, and if so (I doubt), describe the nature of their desired outcome.
2) Show me solid evidence, per your inference, that Dodd-Frank was targeted at WalMart, either to their benefit or to inure to their detriment (in violation of the Bill of Attainder restriction lawmakers must labor under).
I'll wait.
“Specifically, retail stores, led by Wal-Mart and Home Depot, spent more than $40 million in 2010 employing 411 lobbyists. In addition, their employees, lobbyists and PACs donated millions of dollars to key lawmakers.”
http://dailycaller.com/2011/03/29/dick-durbins-cozy-alliance-with-wal-mart-home-depot-and-the-giant-retail-lobby/
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=walmart%2Bdurbin+amendment
Does Walmart deny their support of the (D)urbin amendment?
“The controls are the result of the Durbin amendment to last year’s Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation. They were enacted at the behest of big-box retailers such as Wal-Mart and Walgreen’s, which stand to gain a multimillion-dollar windfall....”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204831304576597173130633798.html
Etc.
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=wal-mart+durbin+site:online.wsj.com
Etc.
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=walmart+durbin+site:www.forbes.com
“...Saint Peter don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go... I owe my soul to the Company Store..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUKXxGoXR9I&feature=related
I give you credit for supporting your claims. This is rare among trolls, so I must conclude that you are not a troll.
I have a serious problem with Walmart trying to create unfair advantages like this. Nonetheless, the good they do, to my mind, outweighs the negative.
Now, to answer your question: Are such actions Right-leaning, or Left-leaning? The answer is: Neither. These actions are Corporatist. A corporation will attempt to survive in any free market or socialist political environment, in any way it can. Obviously, a corporation cannot survive a communist environment, but we are not a communist environment.
———These actions are Corporatist.——
Corporatist, that’s a trifle harsh. There is a better term.
The term is entrepreneurial. The spirit of the entrepreneur is alive and well within Walmart as they continue to plow new ground and grow their business.
I hear you on the ‘harshness’ of the comment, but I meant it to be harsh. Walmart clearly lobbied for an unfair advantage. That’s not entrepreneurial, brother bert, that’s Corporatist.
It’s like a big chess game. ;-)
BTW, if you have bad credit it is difficult to get a checking account even if you have a job. Those people will jump at this.
I suspect the “check cashing” places will get hammered by this. The poorer you are, the more credit costs you. And you drive a beater car that nickels and dimes you.
I’ve said for years that it is very expensive to be poor in the US. Wal-Mart and Amex just made it cheaper.
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