BANK STORIES

Banks are pigs. They have an insatiable desire to make more and more money for themselves to the detriment of those they service. Whose money they hold, work with, and profit from.

Recent occurrences bear out the propensity of banks to overindulge for personal benefit while forgetting the people they were organized to service.

Chase Bank. One of America's oldest banking institutions. Due to numerous mergers the past decade, the bank today is JP Morgan Chase Bank doing business as Chase.

Although U.S. taxpayers bailed Chase and other banks out for their own wrongdoing in 2008 and saved their asses, the banks have not been thankful. To this day, the American people await Chase and other banks return to loaning monies to Main Street rather than Wall Street. 

The banks have survived and are making more money than ever. Major bank CEO's are being paid $20-40 million a year bonuses. Part of the one percent.

Chase announced recently that effective August 1, Chase is going to charge depositors a fee for holding their money. You got it. Savings and checking accounts will be charged a fee payable to the bank. Chase feels it is entitled to something for holding people's monies. The same monies banks invest overnight to a 20 percent profit for themselves and pay depositors 1.5 per cent a year on their deposits.

The fee will be $.25 per $100 deposited. It will add up to millions if not billions of dollars a year.

Pigs might be too gentle a description. They are whores! They will provide any service for a fee.

The next situation is even better. More difficult to believe than the $.25 charge scenario.

There has been a successful move in recent years in certain European and Asian nations by banks. If money in a savings or checking account lies dormant for a specified number of years, the account is deemed inactive and the bank removes the money. The money no longer belongs to the depositor.

Australia did it last year for the first time. The banks grabbed $360 million from dormant accounts.

There is an additional twist. States are permitted to create and apply the dormant account theory based on state law. Each State must pass its own law as California and Georgia have done.  California and Georgia were delighted to pass such legislation. Why not? The money does not stay with the bank. It goes directly to the State. The State thereafter can use the monies to help pay its own debts, finance under funded state pension funds, etc.

The dormant account rule applies to safety deposit boxes, also. No activity and the box is emptied. Cash, jewelry, bonds, etc.

The pigs prevail again. However, this time for the benefit of State governments.

It is one hand washes the other. The banks need federal and state laws to permit them to steal legally from depositors. Along the way, why not do the States a favor and grab some money for them.

Note that what one bank does today, others will do tomorrow. The same with State banking laws.

Which brings us to offshore banking accounts. There are trillions of dollars held in offshore banking accounts by American corporations or corporations doing business in the United States. They sit there because the corporations do not wish to pay U.S. taxes on the money. Taxes which we sorely need to pay down debt and provide for our people.

Recognize that many Congress persons want to cut, alter or eliminate Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The same Congress persons who voted to permit corporate America to enjoy the benefit of tax free off shore accounts.

It does not make sense to me. 

Now to the point of this tirade re offshore accounts. 

Putin announced last week that many Russian businesses are burying their money in offshore accounts to avoid Russian taxes. He said it was time to do something about it.

I believe Putin will. If he moves with the same speed he has re Crimea and gas outlets in North Korea, South Korea and China, he will have the problem resolved in my opinion by year's end. Of course, Putin has an advantage. He rules/governs a totalitarian state. He's the boss, he calls the shots. Russia's legislative body is controlled by Putin. 

I am eager to see how Putin handles his off shore problem. We might learn something from it.

I wonder if we will ever reach the point where the people run the government again. It seems to me Congress is beholden to the corporations and the corporations own Congress. Government of the people, by the people and for the people is yesterday's news. What will it take to return us to those days?