The following link is to a site I had never even heard of until it showed up in an email. The article in TPM Muckraker is important because of what it says about our values. The name of the article is "How Theresa Hatt Caused The Financial Crisis". It is one man's account of his interaction with Bank of America after his 52-year-old mother died of cancer. Theresa Hatt (his mother) had a small balance on her credit card with Bank of America (her credit limit was $1000, so it had to be small). The bank used deceptive practices in order to convince him that he should pay his mother's bill. One of the last paragraphs in the story is as follows:
"What's the larger point here? Well, here's one: When the automakers were asking Washington for a bailout recently, there was a lot of talk about insisting on conditions -- like requiring that they build more fuel-efficient cars -- that would be in the national interest. Bank of America and its competitors have already taken billions in taxpayer dollars. So it seems logical to insist on a similar set of public interest conditions -- and the industry's range of deceptive and rapacious lending practices would be a natural place to start."
If the taxpayers are pouring money into a business, we should at least be able to hold the business to a reasonable ethical standard.
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