Had a Chase card for a few decades? Never missed a payment? Have great credit? Then you are a toxic asset

Welcome to what Daily Puma calls Soiled Green.

YOU ARE A TOXIC ASSET IF YOU HAVE ALWAYS PAID YOUR BILLS ON TIME, AND YOU MUST BE CONVERTED TO SOILED GREEN.

Soiled Green is the act of banks trying to SOIL your credit rating by increasing your monthly minimum payment 250%. When you can’t afford this 250% increase ( 600 dollars a month for some customers) the banks then report your Toxicness to the credit bureaus and then charge you obscenely higher interest rates on the very same debt you previously had been paying down for years, on time.

There’s more.

Plus, ALL OF YOUR OTHER DEBTS will most likely get hit with much higher interest rates as well. Only then will Wall Street Be Happy because it means these robber baron banks have created more profit.. At this point, you become a frightened worker bee whose only mission is to try and pay bills, nothing else matters nor do you care to get involved or protest basically illegal credit card actions out of fear you will fall further behind with your bills

And in Congress, the Band Plays On.

America, Wall Street and Congress are screwing you so badly, it is time to take matters into your own hands. These people are starting to look like bedfellows. Either that or everyone in Congress is inept. You pick.

Our Congress looks the other way every single day while you get screwed.  All those contributions to their election buckets have turned them against you. They are not protecting you from these sharks.

If you have stellar credit, you are being screwed.

They are deliberately trashing your credit rating, and your Congress doesn’t give a rat’s ass.  Neither does the White House. This is starting to look like one big party.

As I mentioned before, I’ve had a 5 % Capital One card for nearly two decades and got a letter saying they would arbitrarily raise my rate to 11% in April. I called and protested and they offered me an “Opt out” that would keep my rate but freeze my card.  This was a deliberate effort to shitcan my FICO score. I refused and told them I would just keep their card for spite and never use it again till they returned my original rate. They decided to let me keep my rate for awhile. Then they had the AUDACITY to remind me to use the card and take advantage of their great rate! I will never use their card, I don’t care if they put it down to 1%. Just for spite.

Do you realize what these pigs are doing while Congress hums along? Your credit score can influence a whole boatload of things. Your car and home insurance premium for starters.  If these racketeers continue to go unchecked, Corporations everywhere will profit and you will lose! They will have the benefit of a responsible payer as a customer with the added benefit of a nice high interest rate!

America, you are being shafted. Not just by Tim Geithner, Goldman Sachs and  International Bankers, but by your own elected officials. They are letting this happen and doing NOTHING about it. If they can fire CEOs they can protect you. But they don’t. What part of this is hard to understand?

There is a shakedown going on here! They are deliberately trashing good credit scores so that they can rape the wallets of ALL Americans.

You are going to have to fend for yourself, because sooner or later, this is going to affect YOUR wallet.

Go here to see what other fed-up Americans are doing. And while you are there, read what some other banks like Citbank and AMEX are up to. Sooner or later, you are going to be raped.

I am more convinced every day that this is deliberate wallet rape. Don’t be silent! Cramp your credit card company’s phone lines with complaints.  If they announce that they are changing your rate, pay off cards if you can and then tell them in person that you will never use their card until they re-instate your original agreement. Do not cancel the card! Make them do the work it takes for you to keep it!  They deserve to have thousands upon thousands of unused registered cards that give these pigs nothing but an echo.

If you can’t pay off your card, go to your Congress Rep’s web site and tell him or her to start paying attention to their constituents instead of greedy international bankers who write them campaign checks. Don’t email them just once. Do it every day and get as many people as you can to do it every day. Jam their email servers. Tell them you vote and that they will NEVER get your vote unless and until they put a complete stop to the harassment of Americans by the credit card companies.  Tell him or her that you are sick of hearing congress say they care and you expect Congress to prove it! It’s time that voters harass them in the way these banks, that have gouged the treasury have the audacity to harass us.

Incidentally, just in case you don’t think this is deliberately contagious,  Bank of America has just announced that they too are going to gouge the hand that kept them alive. They are also raising rates on anyone with a balance, and particularly on anyone who has less than a ten percent interest rate, regardless of your credit rating.

The Federal Reserve and other bank regulators passed rules in December that would limit banks’ ability to raise credit-card interest rates. But that doesn’t start until July 2010.

Now, Congress is considering separate bills that would impose stronger restrictions on banks much sooner. Last week, the Senate Banking Committee approved its version of the legislation, which is waiting for a full Senate vote. A House subcommittee passed similar legislation last week.

Thataway Congress! Jerk around and play with yourselves, while your banking buddies do all their damage to Americans first. You know, give em that time to crank up those rates and get your campaign contribution, wink wink. You hypocritcal bastards!

Say Good Bye To The Declaration of Independence

A nail-biting Cross-Post from RBO.

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The new Global Financial Security Board will do what?

April 5, 2009 by Procrustes

Rarely ever has RBO taken Democratic political creature and alarmist (and rabid Clinton hater) Dick Morris even remotely serious. This time what he has to say deserves a modicum of attention. If he is correct, it’s looking more and more like the Tea Party movement has an even bigger chore ahead.

Thanks to Gateway Pundit, we learn of Morris’s April 3 claim “Obama Just Repealed the Declaration of Independence”. GP writes:

American political author and commentator Dick Morris explains in a rare video release that Barack Obama effectively repealed the Declaration of Independence [as far as the American economy is concerned] this week at the G20 Meeting in London.

Sher Zieve wrote April 3 at WEBCommentary:

On FNC’s Greta Van Susteren’s program, author and columnist Dick Morris noted “literally from April 2nd of this year, that is, today, it’s a whole new world of financial regulation in which, essentially, ALL of the U.S. regulatory bodies and ALL U.S. companies are put under international regulation, international supervision. It really amounts to a global economic government.”Called the Financial Stability Board (FSB), the pending international body’s legislation*—which will of course override the US Constitution—states: “We agree to a framework of internationally agreed upon high standards. We will set up a financial stability board with a strengthened mandate to extend regulation and oversight to all systemically important financial institutions, instruments and markets” — including hedge funds, all — anything that they decide is important to the system — to endorse and implement tough new principles on paying (ph) compensation and to support sustainable compensation schemes and the corporate social responsibility of ALL firms.” The international community will now be able to determine the salaries and compensation of us all.

*Note the word “legislation” is not accurate. It is the April 2 G20 / London Summit Leader’s Statement to which they refer.

The Financial Times reported April 2:

[...] the G20 issued a communiqué that renamed the FSF the “Financial Stability Board”, with an elevated mandate to monitor global financial stability and promote medium-term reform, alongside the International Monetary Fund. The G20 also confirmed an earlier announcement that the FSB would expand its membership to include representatives from all the G20 nations for the first time – in effect turning the group into the nearest thing the world has to a prototype of a an overarching global financial regulatory group.For the moment, FSF officials deny they plan to act like a world regulator.

Scotland’s Sunday Herald reports:

The 10-year-old Financial Stability Forum, based in Basel, Switzerland, suddenly finds itself in the unexpected role of a super-regulator with a new name – the Financial Stability Board – and ordained with new powers to patrol global capitalism.The FSF issued warnings that high bonuses for high-risk ventures were out; that hedge funds would have their risk-taking evaluated; that accounting rules would be rewritten; that derivatives would now have to be sold through a central clearing house; and credit agencies, who got blamed for bad calls on dodgy firms, would be better supervised.

MarketWatch’s Alistair Barr commented April 2:

This is the latest sign that hedge funds and credit rating agencies won’t be spared from a global push to regulate major parts of the financial system that grew outside the traditional banking network. [...]Regulation and oversight will be extended “to all systemically important financial institutions, instruments and markets,” the group added. “This will include, for the first time, systemically important hedge funds.”The recommendations are similar to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s proposal last month to increase regulation of non-bank financial companies, including brokerage firms, hedge funds, money-market funds and insurers through the creation of a new, large “systemic” regulator.

“[T]here will be a crackdown (although no cap) on bankers’ pay and bonuses,” The Independent (UK) adds.

The Observer (UK) reports:

A new financial stability board, bringing together central banks, national regulators and finance ministers from the G20 countries, will co-ordinate international rules in a bid to ensure that future financial crises are handled better. It will be a souped-up version of the Basel-based Financial Stability Forum, created a decade ago to include G8 members, which has led much of the work on analysing the causes of the crunch over the past year.It is chaired by the ebullient Mario Draghi, head of the Italian central bank, who has delivered a consistent message that we must not return to business as usual for bankers. Any “systemically important” financial institution – ie, all those whose collapse could threaten entire markets and economies – will find itself being monitored.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown wasted no time, “calling the heads of Britain’s banks to Downing Street to make sure new regulations on bonuses, capital and tax havens drawn up at last week’s G20 summit are implemented properly,” Philip Aldrick writes in today’s The Telegraph (UK).

The Financial Times wrote April 2:

Exactly how the FSB will impose such global “consistency” – let alone monitor it – remains to be seen. The body has no formal powers to impose anything, and insists that it plans to work alongside the IMF, rather than surplant its activity. In practical terms, it will have little choice.While the FSB says it will expand its secretariat, which is tiny, the permanent staff is likely to remain fairly small. That may constrain its ability to provide much independent monitoring.

In an editorial, Scotland’s Sunday Herald points out the G20 “communiqué made no mention of [the Board's] powers and there is still a danger that it will be a toothless tiger.”

Australia’s The Age shares a common sentiment:

The Financial Stability Forum, whose members include finance ministries, regulators and central banks, including Australia’s Reserve Bank, is set to be transformed by the G20 into the Financial Stability Board, with a bigger membership and mandate.The forum currently aims to “promote international financial stability”.’Frameworks”, “principles” and meetings, as opposed to hard-edged rules, are its stock-in-trade.”It has no enforcement power. It has an encouragement role,” says Ian Ramsay, corporate law expert at Melbourne University.Its new tasks include advising on and monitoring regulation among its members, and collaborating with the International Monetary Fund on “early-warning exercises” aimed at stopping the next financial crisis.But will the new FSB have teeth? “The language they use is moderate, advise, strategic reviews and collaboration,” Professor Ramsay says. “I’m not suggesting it’s not an important role, but it remains to be seen how much we can expect from a body which is an advisory body.”

David Benyon of OpRisk & Compliance magazine comments:

It is unclear how strong this new mandate will be, without, for example, mention of powers of ‘comply or explain’.

Finally, the Christian Science Monitor editorial board weighs in with a bit of sanity:

The G-20 did agree to coordinate each country’s new regulations through a new Financial Stability Board. But anyone who’s ever held a job of “coordinator” knows there is no authority in it.

Mark Steyn doesn’t think G20 or Obama are “serious”

^{Hartford, Conn. 07/05/08}
No. Steyn isn’t writing specifically about the new Financial Stability Board — he doesn’t see that the G20 or Obama are “serious” about dealing with the debt being heaped upon future generations as you read.

In his March 14 NRO post The Brokest Generation Steyn pointed out that the children and grandchildren who stood behind Barack Obama “at all those campaign rallies helping him look dynamic and telegenic and earnestly chanting hopey-hopey-changey-changey … hadn’t offered to pick up the tab.”

Steyn wrote:

Are you sure you young folks will be able to pay off this massive Mount Spendmore of multi-trillion-dollar debts we’ve piled up on you?“Yes, we can!”We thought you’d say that! God bless the youth of America! We of the Greatest Generation, the Boomers, and Generation X salute you, the plucky members of the Brokest Generation, the Gloomers, and Generation Y, as in “Why the hell did you old coots do this to us?”Because, as politicians like to say, it’s about “the future of all our children.” And the future of all our children is that they’ll be paying off the past of all their grandparents. At 12 percent of GDP, this year’s deficit is the highest since the Second World War, and prioritizes not economic vitality but massive expansion of government. But hey, it’s not our problem. As Lord Keynes observed, “In the long run we’re all dead.” Well, most of us will be. But not you youngsters, not for a while. So we’ve figured it out: You’re the ultimate credit market, and the rest of us are all pre-approved! [...]This is the biggest generational transfer of wealth in the history of the world. If you’re an 18-year old middle-class hopeychanger, look at the way your parents and grandparents live: It’s not going to be like that for you. You’re going to have a smaller house, and a smaller car — if not a basement flat and a bus ticket. [...]When you come to take your seat at the American table (to use another phrase politicians are fond of), you’ll find the geezers, boomers, and X-ers have all gone to the men’s room, and you’re the only one sitting there when the waiter presents the check. That’s you: Generation Checks.The Teleprompter Kid says not to worry: His budget numbers are based on projections that the economy will decline 1.2 percent this year and then grow 4 percent every year thereafter. Do you believe that? In fact, does he believe that? [...]

[...] GM is a welfare project masquerading as economic activity. And, after the Obama transformation, America will be, too. The young need to recognize that this is their fight. They need to stop chanting along with the hopeychangey dirges and do something more effective, like form the anti-AARP: the association of Americans who’ll never be able to retire.

Accused of “dumping on” the “younger generation”, Steyn responds today:

Actually, the column in question made entirely the opposite point: – that the “Greatest Generation”, the Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y were perpetrating against those high schoolers and their kindergarten siblings the greatest act of cross-generational theft in the history of mankind.

Pause: In RBO’s humble opinion, those of the “older generation”, the “Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y”, to whom Steyn refers, include members of Congress and Barackistanis who hand-delivered this mess to the rest of us who didn’t and don’t want it. You can’t paint us all with the same broad brush.

Steyn next refers to Richard Fernandez of the Belmont Club, whom Steyn says “gets it”:

The Financial Times explains in numbers what Mark Steyn has asserted in words. We don’t have enough people to pay our bills. The advanced economies are piling up generational debt so fast they need to make children pronto so they can saddle them with unpaid obligations. Forget having kids because they’re wonderful; you need them to pay off the stimulus. The FT says the ageing bill will be a tsunami that will dwarf the current economic meltdown.

Steyn also explains that countries aren’t talking about “the demographic-economic catastrophe just beyond the horizon – say, mid-century – but within ten years. If you’re not talking about this, you’re not serious. Which is why the O-man and the G-20 aren’t serious.”

Americans now compete/grovel for low wage and shitty jobs

One more sign of how much “better” things are getting while our government laughingly imagines that Americans can’t wait to get bank credit to buy another house and a new car:

LEWISTON, Pa. — The growing ranks of unemployed Americans are turning to the traditional fallbacks — retail, restaurants, customer service — to ride out a rough economy. The bad news is job openings there are growing scarce, too.

Widespread “trading down” is sparking a fight for low-wage jobs that employers once struggled to fill. Mark Hall, 24 years old, of Alexandria, Pa., lost his $12-an-hour gig as a videographer when his employer folded and is now looking for anything to make ends meet.

And as our elected officials prattle about how every American should be able to get a four-year degree, whether they have any brains or not:

“Finding a regular job, not even in my field, is very challenging,” said Mr. Hall. “Even working for Lowe’s, I’d settle for that, and I have a four-year degree.”

…….snip……

Despite what objectives they may have put atop their resumes, when asked to describe the work they really wanted, the job seekers largely had the same goal: “I’ll take anything right now.”

In many cases, that desperation means that even educated workers must trade down to jobs below their potential and with lower pay. That results in painful, long-term effects, from hurting their own career advancement to displacing those with less education or experience.

So basically, it won’t be long  before you need that freshly dumbed down four- year degree just to sell hardware at Lowe’s.

All of this while we anticipate yet another major hike in the cost of heat and light with the Bomb Shelter and Y2K scare of the 21st Century known as Global Warming. But not to worry. Homeless people don’t have to worry about utility bills.

But don’t worry, Comrades. Nancy, Harry,  Tim and Barack are going to fix everything. They are going to fix you  good.

On a “Lighter note”, it does look as though The Onion was right. Promises kept. Thanks for reminding me, DE.

Batchelor via RBO: Unemployment Planet

Cross-Posted from RBO.

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Batchelor: Unemployment Planet

John Batchelor writes on his blog:

No End In Sight

The April unemployment number fresh on Friday morning will reinforce the trend that is accelerating. We are at an all-time-high of continuing claims of unemployment — going back all the recessions to 1971. The new jobless claims continue to spike, now at mid 600k, and show that there is no strength anywhere. All the bank maneuvers, all the sparring in Congress, all the globe-trotting by POTUS and delicate diplomacy at G20, cannot answer the facts. The loss of jobs is what is ripping down the morale of the country and making all the other challenges more grinding — and the smart guys say that we are a long way from where the unemployment number will end.

The Consumer Is Spooked

Last evening I received an email from an online service that sells porcelain dessert plates each year for Christmas season. Each year a different design with a Christmas star somewhere on the top of the illustration. When my daughter was small, I bought one each year for her to have as a collection when she is a grown-up with a home for Christmas. For several years I have forgotten, or was distracted, and I fell behind. From an email, I saw the plates on a severe sale — marked down from $85 and $75 to $39. The whole collection is more than one hundred and twenty years old, and the early plates are several thousand dollars. I checked off three plates and put in the order, with free shipping, for $117. Great deal I told myself.

And then this morning, when I read Calculated Risk, the WSJ headlines on the GM fiasco, and the failure of the G20 to make progress on protectionism, on the American banks, I realized that my return to American consumerism was premature. I wrote the company immediately to cancel the order. The service returned a note an hour later confirming cancellation, with a thanks.

This is why folk are losing their jobs. Because of a spooked, ruminative, even superstitious consumer like me. I am certain they need the business. I am certain that their warehouse is their fortune. I am certain that they reduced those plates to draw me in and do business in a slow season. I responded quickly, demonstrating their correct practice. Yet then — I cancelled my own best idea, my best interest. I rationalized my decision when I saw the headlines on the FASB shenanigans with mark-to-market, as if calling a solid waste site a landfill makes everything safe. (Or as Baseline Scenario argues, “Investors are not idiots.”) My refusal probably means someone’s job, or means hours are reduced for someone. Multiply my anecdote by millions of similar hesitations each hour of the day, and you can see why there is no end in sight.

There Is A New Planet Image

On a day of my gloom and irrational fear — scared of Christmas plates — it lightens my heart when I read of the sudden fresh discovery of the image of a new exoplanet at 130 light-years distance around a young star HR 8799. The grand robot Hubble took the photograph 10 years ago of the star. We knew there were three planets there, because of the star wobble, but we could not see them because of the starlight. Using a new image-filtering technique, a Toronto team has identified the outermost exo — seven times Jupiter’s size. There is the thrilling suggestion that it has water vapor in its atmosphere:

“The planet seems to be only partially cloud covered and we could be detecting the absorption of water vapor in the atmosphere,” says Travis Barman of Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Ariz. “The infrared light measured from the Hubble data is consistent with a spectrum showing a broad water absorption feature (at 1.4-1.49 microns), but the level of absorption seen is lower than it would be if the photosphere were completely devoid of dust. Dust clouds can smooth out many of the spectral features that would otherwise be there–including water absorption bands,” Barman says. “Measuring the water absorption properties will tell us a great deal about the temperatures and pressures in the atmospheres, in addition to the cloud coverage. If we can accurately measure the water absorption features for the outermost planet around HR 8799, we will learn a great deal about their atmospheric properties. Hubble, situated well above the Earth’s atmosphere, is excellently located for such a study.”

In a time of great doubt here on modest, rocky and wet Earth, it is a gift to have a new friend that may have water vapor in its atmosphere. It isn’t quite a Christmas star on a porcelain plate, but it is a joy. The formula remains, where there is heat and liquid water, there are the fundamentals for life in the universe as we know it. And jobs.

Job loss numbers for March are not pretty. So it’s time to buy a car.

In defiance of the  government predictions that job losses would stabilize or improve, 742,000 jobs were lost in March of this year–up from 706,000 in February, which was  originally inaccurately reported at 697,000. This number does not include government jobs. 25,000 of those were lost as well. And for anybody paying property taxes which support the slugs in your city, county and state governments, you already know that this number is not nearly enough.

The big drop foreshadows a huge decline in the non-farm payroll reading in the government’s employment report that will be released on Friday, some analysts said.

“It’s a terrible number. It is almost a loss of three quarters of a million jobs which is possibly the highest we have seen so far over the length of this crisis,” said Matt Esteve, foreign exchange trader with Tempus Consulting in Washington.

U.S. stock futures and the dollar fell after news of the bigger-than-expected job losses, while U.S. Treasury bonds regained some of their lost ground.

I guess our President has not kept this particular promise,  reported as only The Onion can.

I am not sure why the media such as CNN are reporting these numbers under headlines such as  “Employment Records Show Mixed Picture,” with quotes such as this telling the tale:

Joel Prakken, an ADP spokesman and chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers, LLC, said he expects to see “sizeable declines” in payrolls for “several more months.”

“We don’t see anything in the data that we examined that suggests a glimmer of hope,” Prakken told reporters in a conference call.

That doesn’t sound like a “mixed picture” to me. CNN’s “mixed picture” rationale? This:

The good news is that job cuts appear to be stabilizing in the financial sector,” John Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, other sectors are seeing an increase in cuts as the recession works its way through the economy. State and local governments across the country are struggling with falling tax revenues as more and more people lose their jobs and homes,” he said.

Well of course  the financial sector has fewer job cuts. They are enjoying hundreds of billions of taxpayer money.

But take heart.

If you buy a new gas guzzler you can’t afford, using your unemployment checks as income reference, President Obama will guarantee your warranty and you will be a Patriot. This should simply drive everyone to the nearest GM/ Hummer dealer.  As we all know,  Hummers are just one more product of GM’s  ongoing promise for the past 30 years  to do their part and produce more fuel efficient vehicles.

One more thing: If you anticipate losing your job, you should buy a nice gas-guzzling Hummer ASAP, whether you need it or not, because if you get laid off, GM will be  making your payments for you for nearly a year while you look for another job. Of course, they will do this with taxpayer money, but hey, it’s not like we didn’t see that coming either.

Don’t be afraid! Buy a car even if everybody around you has been laid off and escorted out of your office and you can now hear an echo in there! And please bear in mind that the President has stated very clearly that he has  no intention of running GM.  That would be Socialism! He would never do that! Don’t let the fact that he fired the CEO and is in the process of replacing the Board of Directors make you in the least bit suspicious. Get that thought right out of your mind. Because even if you aren’t working any longer, you can rest assured that your warranty will be guaranteed by the same people who bring you  Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Post Office and AMTRAK. Buy now and get a free ipod just like  the one the President gave to the Queen!

Whatever you do, if you are still employed, buy a GM car Right Now so that next month’s unemployment numbers won’t be as high, even if you are one of them–and do NOT save any money.  Saving money is so under-rated and sooooooo unpatriotic! Be patriotic. Go into further debt. Don’t be a money saving unpatriotic scumball.  You are screwing up the works. K? Thx!