This is a tale that doesn't make it to the evening news. Or the 24 hour news channel for that matter.

Can't help but notice that much of the #Occupy movement has been about telling stories that aren't making it into the mainstream. Maybe news-gathering and story-telling are in fact morphing.

Can't even say I agree with the term "Mainstream Media" anymore. The common tools available to the journalist and broadcaster are too powerful to ignore. As the story of the Americas changes, so too does the story of those who bring us the news.

Kudos for bringing the story to us from the rough-hewn pavement of #OccupyLA. It's a new era of journalism. No more suites at the Hilton and endless buffet breakfasts from the Marriott.

Chase Bank did something similar to me. I paid my full mortgage amount only because i never got anything in writting to do otherwise. They also assured me that i would get the refinance. Dragged it out for several months and then gave me some utter bullshit excuse as to why they coudn't go through with it. I didn't know that they get $1000 for each one they try to do. Emphasis on try. Cause they don't. The only way to hurt these big banks is monetarily. Hopefully more people will take their money away from these Douch-bags. Thanks.

IRAs are absolutely transferable, tax-free if done properly. Talk to a financial adviser at your new institution; they'll help you do it.


I opened credit union accounts this year (marrying Bean gave me access to an awesome credit union that he has family access to), and so far it's been really amazing how much better they are than my old bank (WaMu / Chase).

While I was working on my undergraduate degrees, I worked in customer service for Wells Fargo Financial's loans for non-revolving credit (when people wanted to finance furniture, pets, and so on through merchants). Their business practices were incredibly shady. For example, all applications that customers and merchants thought they were faxing in to us actually went to a data processing center in Juarez, Mexico. Their names, addresses, DOB, SSN, employment history, and so on, in other words, were being sent to another country without their knowledge or permission (which is legal under NAFTA if it's to Mexico or Canada). We only saw the applications when they were illegible or incomplete, in which case the data entry center would reject them to us for trouble shooting, or when the Mexican site was down.

They also lied about the process publicly. In a press meeting, one of the regional managers emphatically denied that we did anything like that and then to avoid getting caught lying suggested to our branch that the Southwest region shouldn't do it any longer... until he saw how much cheaper it was and then dropped all objections.

I never switched from my credit union to bank with them in the three and a half years I worked there.

Wells Fargo can suck a big one. I had an account with them through Best Buy where they were charging some insurance fee that I never agreed to, on a 36month equal payment plan. I paid each payment on time each month, when my 36 months was up they tried to tell me that I still owed insurance payments. No where in the financing contract was anything about an insurance payment. They tried to tell me I signed a separate form agreeing to it, I asked them to mail me a copy of this form with my signature on it they couldn't. I had to argue with them for 4 months and continue to pay this fee so it would not affect my credit. When they couldn't come up with said form, they then tried to tell me that I actually agreed to it over the phone. Which I would never, so I asked them to either play or send me a copy of a recording of the conversation. When they couldn't provide either they finally agreed to give me back the payments that I made that were for their so called insurance plan. Took 4months plus 6 weeks for them to mail it out but I finally got a cheque from them for $280.

All this talk of fairness... unfortunately, as many of us were taught as children, "life is not fair". I too had a nightmare of a time trying to re-structure a Wells loan (it took over 4 years), and Wells did plenty of stupid stuff. The biggest problem we had was that all the Government programs don't kick in until you're actually delinquent or flat not paying your loan. If you actually have a job, are trying to make payments, aren't underwater... there is no Government help. For being a responsible human being you get... NOTHING. But the fact is, if you borrow money from a bank, you signed a contract to meet a set of terms (and yes, you should have read and understood the contract before you signed it), if you can't meet those terms for whatever reason, the bank owns your property. That's how borrowing works... fair, fair doesn't come into it. If you want fair, save you money and don't borrow.

Everyone has heard the cliché "Life isn't fair," so repeating it doesn't contribute to the conversation in any way. Besides, in any conversation about fairness, we are operating on the premise that there are degrees of fairness or not. We'd like to make things more fair and we can rightfully critique something that is less fair than it should be. Noting that the world is unfair in the abstract does little to address questions about why we should permit actions which make life less fair. Instead, we should be working to find ways to make it more fair, which is often something within our power. Slavery, for instance, was an incredibly unfair institution that we recognized as such and ended, making the world more fair than before. Whether or not life was fair in the absolute was beside the point.

On the current topic, our laws regarding banking are supposed to discourage unfair lending, by outlawing predatory interest rates, discrimination in lending, and so on. Unfortunately, the terms of the exchange still seem to be incredibly unjust at present because banks often don't seem to be required to make good faith efforts to hold up their end of the bargain. That situation should be insulting to you, as a member of the public, since we so recently bailed out the nation's financial sector. Our investment in that bailout should have ensured that banks would feel the slightest bit thankful and not try to shit on their customers. Likewise, most of us think our elected representatives might want to consider not letting banks continue acting as carelessly and predatory as before, given that they - the politicians - are supposed to be protecting us rather than the banks. The fact that banks are acting the way they are and that politicians are comfortable with it is hardly surprising to anyone of us here, but it's still insulting and an outrage.

Also, our only two options aren't to borrow and accept unfairness or not borrow at all. We can always demand changes in the terms of exchange or, you know, choose a local credit union which doesn't have the political and economic clout to treat customers like crap without suffering a backlash from them or from our legal system.

That is simply not the entire story. For one thing, by the terms of many of those contracts, the bank should not have made the loan in the first place. What's good for the goose is good for the gander: if banks can break contracts in order to make loans, why is it suddenly wrong to break contracts when it comes to repaying those loans?

I've got an appointment on Thursday afternoon with a credit union in the hopes I can get a debt consolidation loan and close out my other bank accounts. Fingers crossed!