First Posted: 01-14-10 12:34 PM | Updated: 01-14-10 03:23 PM
Update at 3:13 PM:American Express announced today that processing fees for any donations made to the 65 charities listed on this website between January 12 and the end of February will be rebated back to those charities.
As a massive human tragedy unfolds in Haiti, relief organizations are soliciting credit-card donations through their hotlines and websites. About 97 percent of these donations will actually make it to the designated organizations — but the other 3 percent will be skimmed off by banks and credit card companies to cover their “transaction costs.”
Thanks to this hidden fee, American banks and credit card companies are making huge profits — somewhere in the neighborhood of $250 million a year — off of people’s charitable donations, according to a Huffington Post analysis.
Those profits rise sharply after major disasters, when humanitarian relief organizations such as Oxfam and Operation USA take in more than 85 percent of their donations via credit card — and the credit card providers, with only a few exceptions, refuse to waive their fees.
Credit card companies have only been willing to waive their processing fee for charity once, Richard Walden, the CEO of Operation USA, tells the Huffington Post, and that was for the tsunami disaster of 2004. Source Article
Embattled Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd (D) has scheduled a press conference at his home in Connecticut Wednesday at which he is expected to announce he will not seek re-election, according to sources familiar with his plans.
Dodd’s retirement comes after months of speculation about his political future, and amid faltering polling numbers and a growing sense among the Democratic establishment that he could not win a sixth term. It also comes less than 24 hours after Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) announced he would not seek re-election.
State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is widely expected to step into the void filled by Dodd and, at least at first blush, should drastically increase Democrats’ chances of holding the seat.
Chase and Citibank announced via their websites that they are no longer participating in (Federal Deposit Insurance Company) FDIC Transaction Account Guarantee Program. Both banks are still insured under the general FDICprogram, however.
What is the FDIC? It’s the government entity that makes it safer to keep your money in the bank rather than stuff it in a mattress. In the case of a bank failure, your funds deposited in that failed bank are guaranteed and will be returned to you. From the FDIC website:
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is an independent agency of the United States government that protects funds depositors place in banks and savings associations. FDIC insurance is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. Since the FDIC was established in 1933, no depositor has ever lost a single penny of FDIC-insured funds.
What does dropping the Transaction Account Guarantee protection mean to you? Actually, you should be pretty scared. Taking a protection away from your hard earned funds is not a good thing. Nor is it a good sign of the health of these banks. Dropping out of the program means that the banks don’t have to be quite as strict with their banking procedures.
The Huffington Post | Ryan McCarthy First Posted: 12- 9-09 01:30 PM | Updated: 12- 9-09 05:38 PM
British bankers are going bonkers today after the UK government announced that it wouldn’t stand idly by as they showered themselves with obscene bonuses made possible by last year’s massive infusion of government money.
Alistair Darling, the U.K.’s Chancellor of the Exchequer — sort of like a Treasury Secretary, but with more pluck — announced today that he will impose an immediate, one-time 50-percent tax on bonuses of more than 25,000 pounds (about $40,800). That’s on top of regular income taxes.
The New York Timescalls it “the most direct attack on bonuses anywhere in the world.”
Across the pond, however — where the Wall Street titans whose companies were saved from dissolution by an infusion of hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars are about to reward themselves with a good chunk of that money in the form of year-end bonuses — no such action is in the offing. Source Article
Too bad our Congress doesn’t have the balls of the British Parliament . Of course, we all know what our Congress is–the only question is what their price is! ~Susan~
Ben Bernanke has overseen the greatest expansion of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet in its history, pouring trillions of dollars into Wall Street firms at roughly zero interest rates.
His generosity, however, has a limit.
In testimony before the Senate Banking Committee today, where he’s seeking re-appointment as the Fed’s chairman, Bernanke called for cutbacks in Medicare and Social Security even as unemployment rises and the middle class is endangered.
Citing legendary bank robber Willie Sutton, Bernanke said of the retirement and health care funds that are the legacy of the New Deal: “That’s where the money is.”
Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah) sympathized with Bernanke, saying that, because of entitlement spending, “you’re going to be looking at a situation where the Congress will be unable to provide any kind of fiscal discipline because of the mandatory spending. That puts an enormous burden on your plate.”
“Well, Senator, I was about to address entitlements,” Bernanke replied. “I think you can’t tackle the problem in the medium term without doing something about getting entitlements under control and reducing the costs, particularly of health care.”
Bernanke reminded Congress that it has the power to repeal Social Security and Medicare.
“It’s only mandatory until Congress says it’s not mandatory. And we have no option but to address those costs at some point or else we will have an unsustainable situation,” said Bernanke. Source Article
First Posted: 09-21-09 06:42 PM | Updated: 09-21-09 08:48 PM
Backers of President Obama’s cornerstone financial regulatory reform proposal pushed back Monday against the Blue Dog Coalition, which is promoting a counter-proposal to the Consumer Financial Protection Agency in the House Financial Services Committee.
The proposal, being championed by Blue Dog Walt Minnick (D-Idaho) and reported in Monday’s Politico, would create a “council” consisting of regulatory agencies that would make suggestions to Congress regarding what abusive practices might need to be curtailed. Minnick told Politico that Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) was open to it.
“As soon as I saw the story, I called Minnick and said, ‘You’ve really gotta retract it,’” Frank told HuffPost, saying he was “absolutely opposed” to the proposal and told Minnick as much when they spoke about it last week. A Minnick spokesman didn’t return a call. Source
If there’s one thing that everyone seems to agree on, it’s that the current financial crisis is complicated. There’s two problems with this. First, it’s not, fundamentally, true. The causes for the crisis are fairly simple when you strip away the artifice and lingo. (Most notably an $8 trillion housing bubble that the financial over-class insisted wasn’t a bubble.) But more importantly, the perceived complexity of the issues are being cynically manipulated by those responsible to stem the tide of popular anger and insulate themselves from the wholesale reforms that are necessary.
In a piece on the bailout, Matt Taibbi referred to this posture of condescension as the “eye-roll.” As soon as you ask a question — why did you think housing prices would go up forever — you are treated to the eye-roll which is the posture of those in power to the supposed ignorance and idiocy of those attempting to figure out just how they broke the world. Source
Published by Democracy Now! On the first day of his vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, President Obama spent five hours golfing with UBS executive Robert Wolf, an early financial backer of Obama’s presidential campaign. As the pair teed off, another UBS banker, Bradley Birkenfeld, had just been handed a forty-month prison sentence after pleading guilty to assisting a client evade taxes. It was the first sentence in a wider scandal that has seen UBS admit to helping wealthy Americans dodge their tax obligations. On his own initiative, Birkenfeld blew the whistle on UBS. His disclosure and cooperation with US authorities provided inside information into the bank’s conduct and sparked the massive federal investigation.
You know times are tough when people are getting kicked out of their house when it’s not even for sale.
That’s what happened to Anna Ramirez after she found all of her stuff out on the front lawn of her Homestead home last week and a strange man demanding she get out of his newly purchased house.
The eviction came after Ramirez’s home was mistakenly auctioned off to the highest bidder by her bank, Washington Mutual (yes, we know WaMu is now Chase, but we’re in denial). Usually, you get a warning before you get the boot. A foreclosure letter. Maybe a sign saying your house is up for sale. Not Ramirez, who found her belongings bashed and battered in the street. Source
Update at 3:13 PM: American Express announced today that processing fees for any donations made to the 65 charities listed on this website between January 12 and the end of February will be rebated back to those charities.
