PHOTOS, PAGE 1

       Editor and prime reporter is Doug Terry, a veteran television and radio reporter in   Washington, DC, (details below)

Okay, so word from the White House is that they are considering some sort of pay back scheme for America’s banks because of the massive Federal bailout they got only a year ago. That’s a wonderful idea, even though it would be difficult to come up with a plan that wouldn’t just slow down lending (even more) and perhaps prolong the recession. The fear, also, is that the banks would just pass along any fees to the customers, defeating the whole purpose. The devil is in the details.

Here is an idea: don’t just make the banks pay back the money that was loaned to them, make them pay double. That way, when the 2010 “bonus season” rolls around, they might just have a lot less money left to dole out like Christmas candy to thousands of people who, after all, don’t do anything more, in most cases, than pass paper around in offices.

The banks have been stealing from American citizens for at least the last decade and a half. They’ve added fees on top of fees on top of fees. The horror of this system is that it hits people who are on the margins the hardest. Someone who wrote a check for 32 dollars at the grocery store and then found a whole bunch of checks bouncing is suddenly faced with hundreds of dollars in fees. Either pay up or loose your bank account.

The other legalized form of theft is credit cards, which many Americans have found out in recent months can be a sword in their sides instead of a helping hand. The interest on credit cards is outrageous. During inflationary times, banks discovered they could raise their rates through the ceiling. When inflation went down, the credit card rates stayed high and in some cases got higher. Then, they too starting piling of fees: fees for being one day late, fees for “overcharging your card”, fees, if you can believe it, because you sent the payment in to them in a different one than they provided!

The overcharging fee is one of the most outrageous. You have a credit limit of, say, two thousand dollars. If you go over that limit, you can only do so if the bank approves the charge. If they don’t want you to put the charge on the card, all they have to do is refuse it. So, is it really overcharging if the card company approves the payment ahead of time? No, but they make billions of dollars by playing this little game (lying).

The new consumer protection legislation, which never would have passed under a Republican president, is supposed to lessen some of these outrages (it will, but not by much), but what about the billions that have already been sucked from American wallets by a giant, jet vaccuum of the banks?

If Obama wants to go down in history as a president who means something, a president who did more than just make minor changes here and there to what Bush had wrought, then this is a big opportunity. Take the banks to the cleaners and let the chips fall where they may. If they want to try to punish America for making them use more honest practices, let them try it. If they do, there could be other legislation waiting in the wings, like a break up of the biggest banks back into smaller, more manageable units. It could happen.

Doug Terry, 1.11.10

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