Bank of America: Criminal Bank & Cackling Mad Home Invasion Menace

wow
just, wow

@Capt Howdy: And these are the stories that have made it to the press. Can you imagine chaos amid the shattered ruins that is as yet unpublicized?

@FlyingChainSaw:
seriously. I have my own BofA story I think I have related here before.

@Capt Howdy: No kidding. Who doesn’t? It’s an insane bank. What did they do to you? Grab your car?

@FlyingChainSaw: Nice work.

Query: Does Ballantine rhyme with Valentine or Christine?

@FlyingChainSaw:
went to Canada to work from living in LA and banking there for about, oh, ten years.
I had an automatic deduction from my checking to savings of 100 bucks per week.
I had forgotten about this.
when I left I left a couple hundred bucks in the account because I figured I would be back.
several months later in canada I was short and tried to get money from the BofA account and the machine ate my card. I call them and find out that for months they had been trying to deduct 100 bucks from my now empty checking to put in my savings and charging me an over draft charge every time. oh, and mailing the notices to an LA address I had not used for 6 or 7 years (this is actually the weirdest part, they HAD my current -when I left – address because as I said I was still banking there).
anyway, by the time I found out about it with interest and penalties I OWED them several thousand bucks. I politely informed the bitch who flatly refused to even discuss reducing the fees, that hell would freeze over before they saw one penny of that money.
I actually ended up doing a bankruptcy almost entirely to avoid paying them. something actually easy to do with my seasonal work in the film industry.

@SanFranLefty:

Rhymes with Valentine.
And perhaps, in honor of this most excellent post, “Ballantine Valentine” will enter the lexicon. It will, of course, mean taking a long, satisfying piss on the face of an arrogant, toxic, haughty fuckstick brought low by fate.

I switched from Chase to a local bank last year, and in my discussion with them about mortgages I found out that they have never in 75 of residential mortgage lending had a foreclosure. They have this crazy ‘open door’ policy where if you go through a rough patch you come to them and they will work with you. So novel, and INSANE.

@homofascist:
I now use a very small, small town bank.
and I will forever.
difference of day and night.

I’m grateful to FCS for encouraging my move from BoA to my union’s credit union: The Bank of Sparkly Musical Theatre High-Five! I took extreme pleasure from canceling my BoA AMEX and telling them exactly why. I got a card from BSMTH-F! VISA but the limit is half what I had with BoA. So I’ll keep that open in case for as long as they don’t charge me for it. All other accounts have been moved, cost nothing and I know the staff.

@homofascist: That doesn’t mean people didn’t lose their homes. Likely, the bank simply regarded mortgages as high quality assets (they are, if written to conventions) of enduring value and held onto them so they could actually rewrite them, short-sale-and-discharge-them, assign them, etc. The creation of national markets for mortgage products opened up massive pipelines for resale and securitization which led to confusion about transfer and ownership of notes and associated servicing since a number of parties may be involved in servicing a note, managing the payment of escrowed taxes, etc. When things to sideways, chaos ensues. One consultant I know in the mortgage industry spends half of her billable hours in court describing the paper cascade and misdirection of payments that led to a wrongful foreclosure. Big banks are at a loss to even know who is holding the paperwork for each note in many instances. So when things go sideways, everyone including the bank is shit out of luck.

B of A, or “the Pope’s bank” as we called it in those innocent days, financed my undergrad and law school educations. I think they feel so badly about that that they’ve decided to fuck over as many people as possible.

on an even more unrelated note
did you know that the famous Nicholson from the scene above was improvised?

The Top Seven Classic Movie Moments You Didn’t Know Were Improv

@Dodgerblue: Then my six figures of student loans are responsible for Citibank ass-fucking the economy??

@SanFranLefty: Yep. You have a heavy weight resting on your shoulders.

@Dodgerblue: Yeah, where’s my bailout for the risky loans I took out? Citi sure knows how to get over a grand a month out of me.

@SanFranLefty: That’s why they needed a bailout — you weren’t paying enough.

@Dodgerblue: The important question is why did Citi hold onto that note. My sense is that Lefty’s loan scores high for quality. I wish AG Holder would ask these question: why did the big originators hold onto the high quality notes? What proportion of subprime paper was sold and held? Why? Is there any reason to believe they were preferentially writing and selling crap paper they knew was bound for detonation in someone else’s portfolio?

@Capt Howdy: Yes, this is familiar. I love the way the hyenas just keep treating the penalty as a loan and compounding it forever and a day. The customer has exposed themselves to our usurious horror so they are only deserving of bankrupcy. They are free to know and act under the assumption that the bank acts like any typical drug addict attacking you in an alleyway with a broken bottle. And, hey, freedom is what America is all about.

@FlyingChainSaw: Of course they held on to the note, because I can’t default or discharge student loan debt, not even in bankruptcy.

@SanFranLefty: Student loans with 25 year terms? Cripes. shit has gotten completely out of hand. When I was doing the undergrad thing, people could actually pay cash if they drove cab, worked trades part-time, sold drugs, fixed and flipped property, (knew one guy at our morning kaffee klatch that was a freelance undertaker; had his own parking spot in town near the school’s buildings which he paid monthly for so he could move when the beeper barked) or took decent cash-based hospitality gigs at night and weekends. It sucked living in a staggering sleep-deprived dog but it ended after 4 or 5 years and you owned yourself when it was over. Any of this stuff should be simple interest, prime+ non-compounding with caps, even if repayment is interrupted. I read about some of this in a book about debt but the 25 year term is one I don’t recall. This is just life begun and lived until middle age in a harness.

Speaking of, I’ll be making my final student loan payment on February 1st. It’s taken over a decade, but it’ll be gone gone gone!!

Time for grad school!

@FlyingChainSaw: As I’m sure any Stinquer who recently went through college or recently put a child through college can tell you, tuition is out of control – public and private universities. Tuition at my private alma mater undergraduate institution has quadrupled in the 20 years since I attended. I was lucky to graduate from college debt free, but that was because I scored several scholarships and worked 30 hours a week during the school year and two jobs during the summer. Law school was absurd – the annual tuition was higher than my annual income at the job I had before I started law school. You’re not allowed to work (on the books) as a 1L, and 2Ls and 3Ls are only allowed to work up to 20 hours a week. So naturally you get six figures into debt. Universities view law schools and B-schools and med schools as the cash cows that subsidize everything else, ostensibly because we’re all going to graduate and get jobs paying $160,000/year, which in the legal world is patently untrue for 90% of law school grads who aren’t graduating from the top ten law schools in the country (or the 90% who aren’t in the top 10% of the top 50 schools), and for the 20% of top ten grads who don’t go to BigLaw. Some law schools (and med and dental schools) have debt forgiveness programs that assist graduates with loan repayment in exchange for a certain number of years in public service; however, these repayment programs have been hit hard by declining endowments at private universities and state budget cuts at public universities (i.e. North Carolina rescinded their program entirely) and have left graduates who had held up their side of the bargain now facing and unable to repay student loan debts that often total 50% of their take-home income.

Most student loan repayment schemes are on a 30 year plan because repaying them is like paying back a mortgage. My student loan debt after 3 years was more than what my parents’ mortgage was on their house. I lived frugally, I worked (sometimes off the books) and had four roommates through law school and still this was the case. Some repayment programs and lenders require a 10 year repayment plan, which is how you wind up with monthly bills of $1500. Although in the end you pay way less interest to the lenders, you are in a sling for a decade.

The tuition inflation and student loan schemes is a financial fraud/scheme that I think is on some levels as bad as or worse than the mortgage debacle. Like the mortgage debacle, it preys on one of the cornerstones of American ideals (i.e. getting a degree is the ticket to success, becoming a homeowner is the best), feeds off of the mentality at too many employers and businesses that a four-year-degree is a prerequisite for the most entry-level of jobs, yet unlike mortgage debt, you cannot discharge student loan debt. It is somewhat apocryphal, but according to Urban Legend of my Law School, there was a ’90s era graduate who contacted financial aid and asked what happened to the law school debt if he were to die. The student loan debt, contrary to ones’ Jarndyce v. Jarndyce fears, actually does not hit your heirs. Two days after the phone call with Financial Aid, this out-of-work, depressed, and overwhelmed alum killed himself.

Someday in my spare time I’d like to write a book or article about the student loan/tuition/entry level jobs debacle, but I’m busy trying to get a second job working retail, tutoring, or waiting tables to help with my student loan payments. If anyone knows any book publishers, I could use an advance to research the book.

ADD: Barry and Shelley O didn’t pay off their HLS debt until he published Dreams From My Father Audacity of Hope. Hmmm….

ADD 2: I don’t want to sound like a whiner. It was my free decision to pursue this expensive education and I am glad in balance I did it; however, it is something that has so profoundly affected my life and life choices years after graduation that I really don’t think I could have conceptualized the impact even if warned. That said, OA, don’t do it!!

@SanFranLefty:

I’m sure Sallie Mae has figured out a way to extend those notes into the afterlife by now.

@SanFranLefty:

It is completely insane, isn’t it? By 2024, four years of tuition, room & board at a public university is projected to cost $150,000. Either things will change significantly or only the wealthy will go to college. Buh bye American middle class.

@SanFranLefty:

It’s not just the entry level job market, either. A master’s is the new bachelor’s degree, and a bachelor’s is the new high school diploma.

@FlyingChainSaw: Oh Chainsaw, I have some new red meat for you…..:

Credit card companies making 3% off Haiti donations – $250 million at last count. How generous of them to now start waiving their “service charge” – motherfuckers.

@Original Andrew: Yes and yes and yes to your three comments. Each one of which will be a chapter or two in my book.

@SanFranLefty:

I had a killer interview at the UW last Thursday. Now about that GRE–how scary is the math part anyways?

@SanFranLefty: Regarding student loans and tuition costs, I have two observations:

1. Economists, and I mean real scientists, who observe reality, rather than pursuing their own logic up their own asshole, have observed that its pretty predictable that if you subsidize something, its price goes up. Think of it this way, noone would question that its a fact, the reason real estate prices skyrocketed from around 1997 to 2007, was because of the availability of cheap and easy credit. As long as the monthly payment remained the same, people would pay twice as much for the same property, as far as their budget, it was the same price. Economists say price depends on supply and demand, nope, absolutely not, there is a third and equally important factor, and thats the ability of the target market to afford it.

So, tuition has skyrocketed precisely because student loans are so readily available, exactly as in the real estate market.

2. The fraud is not in inducing people to take out the loans, its in telling them they are buying something thats worth something. People at the mass market universities (the top tier is another thing) buy into the idea that that degree is a ticket to the middle class.

Ooops, noone tells them there is no middle class anymore. They are borrowing $100,000 for a ticket to a salaried, respectable form of very insecure wage slavery that doesn’t earn them any more than a good tradesman these days. The “white collar” life these days involves longer hours, lower wages, and more insecurity, than a good trade. Except at the very top, if you have a ticket from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and want to go into juggling money and skimming a percentage, thats still viable.

@Original Andrew: I just guessed at most of the math and did OK. My brother filled out a pretty pattern on the answer sheet, then took a nap. He did just about as well.

@Promnight:

But what about those of us who’re passionate about studying organic modernism or 1960s French Situationists?

@Original Andrew: Math is easy – listen to Cynica, make a pattern. English is the harder part of the GRE. Oh, and on the LSAT – if you loved those crazy logic problems as a kid where you did multiplication tables and then made the grids “Anna knows Bobby like Chachi and Dougy needs drugs” and you were always first or third in class – you, too, could get a 160 on the LSAT.

@Original Andrew: Then save yourself $60-75K in tuition, sell your shit, move to Paris, find an apartment and get a bike, teach English and drawing to 7 year old kids off the books, and have a fabulous time with Mr. OA in Pah-ree biking around and eating stinky cheese and bread and looking at pretty pictures and pretty people. At the end of the day, that life experience is worth more than any book you might read at U-Dub’s French Department.

@Original Andrew: No way you can claim you were fooled into thinking you would earn a living, anyway.

Why do you think this English Lit major and wannabee poet went to law school? Fear of starving. Oh, and LA Law was big, then, thats something, too, also. Susan Dey.

@Promnight:

Snort! I know! But it’s either that or (shudder) business school.

If someone ever yells “is there a doctor in the house??!!” then I could proudly raise my hand and reply “I have a PhD in Architectural History!”

@Original Andrew: Miers – cold and pretentious. FLW – how do you heat that shit? Have I saved you money yet?

Honey, it ain’t nothing like a natural disaster to make me realize how worthless a J.D. or 99% of degrees are and how much I wish I had gone for the R.N. or M.D. — whether I’m on a plane when someone’s yelling “is there a doctor on board” or when I want to go put a saline IV line in a 4 year old Haitian girl’s arm so the doctors can amputate her foot.

Knowing Constitutional Law ain’t worth a fuck when a 7 year old kid needs to have a leg reset. I curse my 9th grade Jeebus freak Biology science teacher who dashed my dreams of being a doctor who told me if I couldn’t memorize the phyllum of a snail I could never become a pediatric cardiologist. And of course, me, not being smart enough to question why a 9th grade science teacher at a public school in ass-fuck Texas would be the definitive judge of this, my parents being no better and utterly deferential and since I was being raised in a family of hard-working clueless folks I was told, “Well, you’re not smart enough to be a doctor according to Mrs. ______, but you are one smart-ass girl, so maybe you should go to law school.” And thus the die were [was?] cast when I was 13.

It’s nothing like a natural disaster to make you realize how useless you are. Unless you’re a scientist, doctor, master of the backhoe, or a cook, you are useless. At least my grandpa, the alcoholic Irish-Cherokee dude who dropped out of high school during WW-II to cook for many a general through Asia, taught me how to take a whole chicken and feed 12 people out of it. Oh, and he taught me how to count cards when playing poker and Blackjack, FSM love him.

@Original Andrew: My son and I built a model for a school project of a pre-European contact Pueblo Indian house based on my great grandmother’s place back at the ancestral homeland. Roof top entrance, central fire pit, ladders that can be pulled up and inside at the end of the day or for defense, rack outside for drying skins, all on about a 1/12 scale. We got to discuss the development of habitat from caves to pithouses, kivas and the introduction of doors as security increased. Probably more anthropology than architecture; interesting and a lot of fun.

@SanFranLefty: Die was cast, dice were cast.
I was talking with a friend tonight–a professor at a med school–who’s planning to go to Haiti this summer to help with rebuilding efforts. I observed that my only skills in an emergency situation are mixing cocktails and calling a plumber. As my brother so rightly says, we’re nothing but Eurotrash.

@FlyingChainSaw: I think this is exactly what happened: “why did the big originators hold onto the high quality notes? What proportion of subprime paper was sold and held? Why? Is there any reason to believe they were preferentially writing and selling crap paper they knew was bound for detonation in someone else’s portfolio?”

Then their trading arm could short the paper of the stuckee, that is, the entity stuck with the sure-to-die loans. There was recently a NYT story about this. It’s brilliant, in a purely evil kind of way, in that a 5 year-old could see through it but the perps knew that greed would make people believe that shit was silk.

@SanFranLefty: I got my EMT certification while I was in the most left wing of liberal arts degree programs at the University of New Mexico, the “bachelor of university studies (taken anything you want and still graduate). Fortunately, I’ve never had to use it for any major purpose although I think I could patch someone up until someone else showed up. I really do need to get it updated, though. Plus that, I love to build shit, so we’ll be off to build schools or houses somewhere in the next couple of years.

@SanFranLefty:

Perhaps there’s something legal-related you could help people with in the medical field? Very short story: Mr. OA’s mom died on the operating table at a major hospital due to one of the clearest cases of medical malpractice anyone had ever seen. The hospital was gonna screw Mr. OA’s family six ways from Sunday until a lawyer stepped in and negotiated a reasonable settlement that replaced her lost income for Mr. OA’s dad, without which he would’ve been completely screwed (she couldn’t have gotten life insurance because she was a cancer survivor). It’s not as dramatic as saving someone’s life in a hospital perhaps, but it sure made a huge difference for Mr. OA’s family.

@redmanlaw:

That sounds really beautiful, RML. I’ve always been fascinated by longhouses, plankhouses, grass houses, adobe & earthen structures, since they were a reflection of both utility and tribal society.

@Original Andrew: Every summer for several years we added to the adobe house my dad grew up in. We hauled timbers from the mountains for roof beams, even using a horse drawn wagon before we got a truck. We made our own adobes with clay and straw and water from the irrigation ditch until we could afford to buy them. Parts of the house had dirt floors covered by linoleum with a layer of newspaper in between. It’s where I first saw The Observer. How it got there I don’t have a clue. We had a dirt roof over a layer of sticks (latillas). No indoor plumbing or electricity until the mid-70s (which we had of course when we lived in Albuquerque before going back to the ancestral homeland). Although it was lacking in some ways, life in the elementary through jr high years was also very rich.

Sadly, the house is now in disrepair.

@SanFranLefty:

I pitched a master’s thesis on the work of Fay Jones and the chair of the department seemed stoked.

@Original Andrew: V. cool!

If it walks like a piggy, talks like a piggy, by golly it’s a PIGGY!

BofA and it’s CEO Brian Moynihan reminds me of that song by John Lennon and George Harrison titled “Piggies” I invite you to listen to this song on youtube and see if it appropriately fits.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXdKlpBOvs0&feature=related

Have you seen the little piggies
Crawling in the dirt
And for all the little piggies
Life is getting worse
Always having dirt to play around in.

Have you seen the bigger piggies
In their starched white shirts
You will find the bigger piggies
Stirring up the dirt
Always have clean shirts to play around in.

In their ties with all their backing
They don’t care what goes on around
In their eyes there’s something lacking
What they need’s a damn good whacking.

Everywhere there’s lots of piggies
Living piggy lives
You can see them out for dinner
With their piggy wives
Clutching forks and knives to eat their bacon.

Wright vs. Bank of America Lawsuit at: unitedlawgroup.com

When I filed my lawsuit against Bank of America, myself and United Law Group thought of the many others out there in the same situation. It was then that we decided to educate the public on what these piggy banks are doing, as well as unite us all together as one voice. Please help me turn this David vs. Goliath modification process, into a Goliath vs. Goliath.

Please stand with me and United Law Group and send an email to Bank of America that states that we will no longer tolerate their potentially illegal, fraudulent, irregular and abusive business methods.

Divided we might have fell America, but united we must stand!

Please send your email directly to Bank of America and include the following:

1. Your name
2. Your complaint concerning your experience with Bank of America.
3. Please end your email “I support John Wright vs. BofA Lawsuit!”
4. Please send a copy of your email to johns-wright@hotmail.com
5. Please send your email to both BofA link below and the CEO email

BofA Linked Email:
https://www3.bankofamerica.com/contact/?lob=general&contact_returnto=&state=VA

CEO Brian Moynihan:
brian.t.moynihan@bankofamerica.com

@Wright4ulg: My favorite Beatles song …