MAMEWorld Forums - The Loony Bin - Re: Then you're missing the bigger picture if you blame the banks.

That little story works, if you weren't taking about banks. I hate regulations and government interference as much as anyone, but banks are a PRIME example of why regulations are needed.

"What is that Mr Jones? Your 3.9% APR credit card was three days late? Sorry, but due too your gross negligence we have re-negotiated your terms. Your APR is now 29.99%. Sorry." ( Imagine if they could do this with your mortgage? They didn't even need you to be late to do this until recently. )

"Mr.Jones, We have arbitrarily decided that a $5 ATM fee will now be standard across all ATMs. And your checking account must have a $500 minimum starting Tuesday or you will be assessed penalties."

Or my favorite, banks that payed TARP fund back with loans. Sometimes loans from other government backed programs. At higher rates mind you. Why? "We can't operate under TARP regulations." (read: We're too big to fail, help us...but we don't want any terms on that help.") Or take practices like Citigroup splitting into two companies and shoveling most of their bad loans into one company, and you have yourself a pretty picture painted. You have one company (Citicorp - the good debt) which is running exactly as they did before the bail out, and one company (Citiholdings - the crap debt) which was being sold to a French company. Now Citicorp continues on with clean books, business as usual with no watchful eye, solvent and bigger/badder than ever. Citiholdings has managed to bite the hand that 'saved' them by shoving all of it's questionable 'Now Government backed' debt into someone else's off shore portfolio, and killing off thousands of jobs in the process.

Yeah..The banks problem isn't "free-market." If anything, the banks are a prime example of how free market gets abused.

> QUICK AND DIRTY:
>
> The REAL problem isn't that your bank is going to charge you $5 for using your debit
> card...
>
> This weekend new laws go into effect that brought about that change... new government
> intervention into the free-market...
>
> The REAL problem is that the government has, once again, stuck it's big fat nose into
> free enterprise and instituted a bunch of new regulations that fuck with the free
> markets to serve... not the people... but the special interests who lined their
> re-election coffers.
>
>
> ==========================================
>
> UGLY DETAILS THAT EXPLAIN THE QUICK AND DIRTY:
>
> See... in a free market, banks got the novel idea of offering a convenient card
> people could use to spend their money, and they charged retailers to process that
> transaction... and in a free market retailers could have said no if the fee
> outweighed the benefit to the retailer... ever shopped somewhere where you can't use
> a debit card? They exist. But most retailers see the benefit of added customer flow
> from the convenience as outweighing the fee so they agree to pay it to get those
> customers. More customers, more money flows, more the economy turns, more jobs, more
> prosperity for all. Free markets, baby. Ingenuity = reward. (eta: shocker... also if
> enough retailers declined to pay the fee, guess what, banks would have lowered the
> fee to woo them back in... supply... demand... free markets).
>
> But retailers wanted to be able to have their cake and eat it too, to be able to
> offer that convenieve to their customers without having to pay for it, so they hired
> lobbiests to "pressure" (i.e. bribe in legal ways, like campaign contributions)
> lawmakers to make new laws to alter the free markets in their favor.
>
> Suddenly the gubment felt THEY know better than freedom of choice... so they set a
> limit on the fee banks can charge retailers... making it unprofitable to offer debit
> cards... unless they find an alternative way to make them profitable again... so they
> passed that loss to the card holder. Yes, the banks realize they will loose
> customers, but what good is an unprofitable customer... they ain't. So banks will
> downsize to some degree, some measurable amount of fewer bank cards will be held by
> those who refuse to pay the fee, so fewer customers will have access to that
> convenience, which will cut down on impulse buying.. you get the over all picture
> here... the economy will slow to some degree. Might not be huge amount, but it is yet
> another negative on the free-market economy, not a plus.
>
> (eta: And ironically, now the retail associations are bitchin' because NOW they see
> their new bill they fought so hard for which passes the cost from themselves to the
> card-holder is going to cut into their retail sales since people will quit using the
> convenient debit cards to avoid the $5 fee that got passed to them from the retailer
> because the retailer's law they pushed for made it that way. They pissed in that bed,
> now they have to sleep in it, the dumb shits. But wait... now they are looking to
> enact more legislation to offset that oversight... more government will fix the
> problem, that's what we need, right?)
>
> Why?
>
> Because
>
> Yet another regulation to strangle the shit out of what little remains of our free
> markets, which just slows the economy even more, killing even more jobs in the
> process...
>
> Folks, quit electing "big government" butt-holes to office (specifically Dodd and
> Franks in this case).
>
> The road to recovery is getting government the hell out of the way so the free
> markets can thrive again.
>
> How many people get a new job when an unprofitable company downsizes?
>
> So, shouldn't we be bitching about big government and special interests ruining our
> free economy?
>
> Yeah, lets bitch about the banks, because being a profitable business should be a
> crime, and we need more laws like the one that goes into effect this weekend to
> strangle the shit out of the free market economy even more than it already is. I'm
> tired of having a job working for a healthy company.