Tag: bank of america

California picks the WRONG DANG OCCUPIER to go Full Metal Orwell on.

Background: California Occupier anti-bank fetishist got into a pissing match with one of Bank of America’s corporate security honchos; the latter had the former arranged for vandalism after the former kept supplementing his anti-BoA rants with chalk slogans on the sidewalk.  This is nettle versus wasp territory, here: the Occupier acts incredibly entitled and the security guy seems a little too happy to use his connections to fuel the Occupier’s persecution complex. Anyway, the Occupier’s now facing jail time and fines and is not very happy that the judge won’t let him turn the whole thing into a free-speech debate.

I’m trying to find the right balance, here.

  • On the one hand, vandalism charges are there for a reason.  The idea is to inculcate a respect for public and private property by creating punishments for people who deface either (whether temporarily, or permanently).  The First Amendment doesn’t actually give somebody the right to write rude things about me on my own wall.  Or even nice things about me.
  • On the other hand, thirteen years of jail time is a steep potential penalty for writing slogans on the sidewalk in water-soluble chalk*.
  • On the gripping hand, this is California and an Occupier is fighting with a Bank of America corporate drone and there’s not a damn thing about any of this that has anything to do with me and mine** and Tea Partiers in the same situation would have gotten permission from the relevant individuals before breaking out the chalk and frankly there are about three thousand Occupiers who are infinitely more deserving of a good, solid vandalism charge or two.  Or six. Or twenty.

Continue reading California picks the WRONG DANG OCCUPIER to go Full Metal Orwell on.

Bank of America, CARD Act, Dodd-Frank, and soaking the poor.

See, I told you so.  I freaking well TOLD YOU SO.

Congratulations, Congressional Democrats: you’ve managed to soak the working poor again.

Bank of America will start charging debit-card users $5 a month to pay for purchases. The move comes as the cards increasingly replace cash and as banks look for ways to offset the loss of revenue from a new rule that will limit how much they can collect from merchants.

Via Instapundit.  You see, what happened here is that Senator Dick Durbin took a break from throwing minority kids out of private schools to extend his legislative magic to the field of merchant debit card fees.  The plan?  Force the banks to give up their greedy, greedy profits by limiting merchant-to-bank transaction fees, thus saving the merchants money, which they would then pass along to the customer in the form of lower prices.  Which sounded… actually, it sounded stupid in theory, even then.  It sounds really stupid now because Durbin and the rest of Team Jackass didn’t consider the possibility that their Congressional mishandling of the economy from 2007 to [2010] might have resulted in a poor economy in 2011.  So what happened?  Well, the banks still need the revenue – because of the economy – so they’re going to raise debit card fees to make up for it.  And the retailers aren’t doing much better – because of the economy – so they’re not racing to lower their retail prices.  Assuming that they do it at all.  End result?  Your monthly expenses are probably about to go up.  Hope you have a job! …Oh.  Right.

Oops?

Continue reading Bank of America, CARD Act, Dodd-Frank, and soaking the poor.

Corzine to take over Bank of America?

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.

I can’t possibly imagine how this could have any negative consequences.

Corzine Staff Is Already Preparing To Take Over Bank Of America

Jon Corzine is definitely open to running Bank of America.

There haven’t been any formal talks between the outgoing New Jersey Governor and the board of Bank of America, according to news reports. Part of the reason for this might be that the chairman of the board, Walter Massey, is on vacation.

In fact, if Corzine needs help with filling the board of directors I understand that both Jim McGreevey and Eliot Spitzer are currently available. For that matter, starting next year so will be Ed Rendell, James [David – oops!] Paterson*, and probably Deval Patrick… wow. That’s a Rogue’s Gallery almost worthy of Batman.

Moe Lane

*The Democrats can either toss him in the primary, or we can toss him in the general. Whichever.

Crossposted to RedState.