US Debit Fee Caps May Hurt Poorest Customers: Dimon

When the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul act was passed last summer, its supporters promised greater scrutiny of big money managers, such as hedge funds and private-equity firms, that have long been allowed to fly under regulators' radar........... In a strange twist, the new rules aimed at cleaning up Wall Street may make it easier for some investment managers to commit fraud.

No surprise here------Dodd was bought and paid for by financial interests. And when Dodd dropped out of politics, Frank sucked up to the same interests.

Reams of legislation Dodd has written or advocated affecting the housing, lending, insurance and securities industries have drained hundreds of billions out of the economy, ballooned the federal debt, cost tens of thousands of people their jobs and driven hundreds of thousands of homeowners into foreclosure, bankruptcy or both.

For his efforts, Sen. Dodd has been rewarded in the 2008 election cycle alone with $7.65 million in campaign contributions (he took in $11.7 million in all) from the securities, insurance, real-estate and commercial-banking industries. With $165,400, Sen. Dodd also tops the list of members of Congress who took campaign cash from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac since 1989. Sen. Barack Obama, the self-styled agent of change, is second at $126,000....

SEN DODD'S CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTORS

Citigroup, $310,294;
SAC Capital Partners, $282,000;
United Technologies, $263,400;
AIG, $224,678;
Bear Stearns, $205,600;
St. Paul Travelers, $205,400;
Royal Bank of Scotland, $203,750;
Goldman Sachs, $175,600;
Morgan Stanley, $155,000;
Credit Suisse, $154,550;
Merrill Lynch, $134,950;
The Hartford, $94,350;
Bank of America, $91,300;
JPMorgan Chase, $129,150;
USB, $101,900;
Hartford Finance Services, $101,500
Lehman Brothers, $128,400;
KPMG, $113,100;
General Electric, $108,250;
Deloitte Touche, $108,000

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EXCERPT: TWENTY FIVE PEOPLE AT THE HEART OF THE US FINANCIAL MELTDOWN-----DOWN THE DISASTROUS ROAD TO TRILLION DOLLAR BAILOUTS

ANGELO MOZILO Then-chairman and chief executive of Countrywide Financial. The biggest American sub-prime mortgage lender, was a step away from bankruptcy when Bank of America paid billions to settle investigations by various attorney generals for Countrywide's mis-selling of risky loans to thousands who could not afford them.

Mozilo ran a "VIP programme" that provided loans on favourable terms to influential figures including Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate banking committee, the heads of the federal-backed mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (that taxpayers were forced to bailout) , and former assistant secretary of state Richard Holbrooke (now in Obama's admin).

SEN CHRIS DODD Since June, Sen Chris Dodd (D-Conn) has faced an ethics inquiry over allegations that he received preferential treatment on two mortgages in 2003 from Countrywide Financial. And then came the dramatic financial meltdown last month, placing Dodd at the center of a controversial $700 billion financial rescue plan.

As a member and later chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Sen. Dodd shoulders a good deal of the blame for the collapse of the national housing market, the subprime-mortgage-market meltdown and the convulsions on Wall Street which is costing taxpayers billions.

MORE HERE-----
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jan/26/road-ruin-recession-individuals-economy

CIRCA Sept 15, 2009 A SHOCKING DISPLAY OF OBAMA'S THIRST FOR POWER FOX News' Judge Napolitano notes: if implemented, the unconstitutional proposals Obama urged in his Sept 2009 speech to Wall Street will amount to a final coup d’état by banksters, their technocrats and enforcers, at the Federal Reserve (*the privately-held bankster cartel that masquerades as a government agency).

Obama's "reforms" would install a dictatorial regulatory power controlled by international bankers oer the entire US economy — down to the local grocer and hot dog vendor on the corner. It will control our lives down to the smallest detail. It will require us to ask permission for the most mundane and routine of financial transactions. IT MUST BE BE RESISTED AT ALL COSTS.

VIDEO LINK AVAILABLE Judge Andrew Napolitano On Obama/Bankster Takeover

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The Con of the Decade
Of Two Minds Blog | 7/8/2010 | Charles Hugh Smith
FR Posted by delapaz

The Federal government could potentially inflate away these trillions in Treasuries, buy enough elected officials to force austerity so inflation remains tame. In essence, these private banks and corporations now own the revenue stream of the Federal government and its taxpayers.

Neat con, and the marks (us taxpayers) will never understand how "saving our financial system" led to their servitude to the very interests they bailed out. The circle is now complete: in "saving our financial system," the public borrowed trillions and transferred the money to private Power Elites, who then buy the public debt with the money swindled out of the taxpayer.

Then the taxpayers transfer more wealth every year to the Power Elites/Plutocracy in the form of interest on the Treasury debt. The Power Elites will own the debt that was taken on to bail them out of bad private bets: this is the culmination of privatized gains, socialized risk.

In effect, it's a Third World/colonial scam on a gigantic scale: plunder the public treasury, then buy the debt which was borrowed and transferred to your pockets. You are buying the country with money you borrowed from its taxpayers. No despot could do better. (Excerpt) Read more at oftwominds.com ...

Actually I do pay cash about half the time and the other half I used my debit card as credit and pay no fee.

U.S. banks could lose about $13 billion of their annual industry debit processing revenues

Woe is them.

This would mean that next year their collective bonus pool will only be $131 billion, rather than the $144 billion it is this year.

Color me unsympathetic.

Oh I agree, but debit card fees are not where I’d start.

First of all people spend an average of 18% more when they use a card vs cash. Use cash and avoid both of these problems. Plus your purchase is not trackable by the govt.

I use the debit card but I process it as credit. I have no regular credit cards and I have no debt. I pay cash for most things, but I always use my debit as credit because my bank charges $1.00 for most debits, but nothing when I use it as a credit transaction. The money still comes out of my bank account and no interest is paid.