Tag Archives: Bank of America

In Today’s America, Privacy Is An Illusion

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On Tuesday, Legal Insurrection posted an article explaining how the government spies on Americans without the inconvenience of getting a warrant.

The article reports:

A report from the House Judiciary Committee and Government Weaponization Subcommittee exposed the FBI for abusing the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) to spy on Americans’ bank accounts without a warrant.

“Documents show that federal law enforcement increasingly works hand-in-glove with financial institutions, obtaining virtually unchecked access to private financial data and testing out new methods and new technology to continue the financial surveillance of American citizens,” according to the report.

The article notes:

However, the law prohibits federal law enforcement from asking about a bank’s customer information without a legal process.

“All Americans should be disturbed by how their financial data is collected, made accessible to, and searched by federal and state officials, including law enforcement and regulatory agencies,” the committees added. “With the rise in e-commerce and the widespread adoption of cash alternatives like credit cards or peer-to-peer payment services, the future leaves very little financial activity beyond the purview of modern financial institutions or the government’s prying eyes.”

Here’s a mic drop (emphasis mine): “This is because, as a condition of participating in the modern economy, Americans are forced to disclose details of their private lives to a financial industry that has been too eager to pass this information along to federal law enforcement.”

Yup. Our financial institutions had no problem cooperating with the FBI. It seems a few even helped formulate ideas to spy on us.

The article concludes:

The institutions and FinCEN have been working together to develop new ways to spy on Americans with the Bank Secrecy Act Advisory Group (BSAAG). The new plans include requiring “Americans to have a digital identification to access financial services, testing artificial intelligence to surveil Americans’ financial activity, and working towards even closer coordination between financial institutions and federal law enforcement.”

“As promoted by the BSAAG, this surveillance will be catalyzed by even greater government entanglement with financial institutions as they begin to integrate new technology to more effectively track their customers’ financial habits,” concluded the committees. “Absent renewed safeguards, the federal government and financial institutions will continue to siphon off Americans’ sensitive financial data, place it into the hands of bureaucrats, and erode any remaining semblance of financial privacy in the United States.”

After January 6th, 2021, Bank of America was asked to hand over records of anyone who used a Bank of America credit or debit card in the Washington, D.C., area between January 5th and January 7th of 2021. Those records were used as one method of identifying people who were at the Trump rally or at the Capitol building. There was no warrant involved.

This Could Be Anyone’s Future

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One of the things President Trump repeatedly says that to me is cringeworthy is, “In reality, they’re not after me, they’re after you. I’m just in the way.” The fact that the statement is cringeworthy to me doesn’t mean it is not true. Aside from the injustice currently happening in New York, the injustice being done to John Eastman is a disgrace to America.

On Tuesday, The Daily Caller reported:

One of the left’s biggest political targets recently found himself “de-banked” with no warning and little avenue for recourse, the Daily Caller has learned.

John Eastman, once an attorney for former President Donald Trump, was de-banked twice in the span of several months by two prominent financial institutions, Bank of America and USAA, he told the Daily Caller. His accounts were closed as he faced substantial backlash for his work advising Trump around the time of the 2020 election.

Eastman said he had switched most of his banking from Bank of America to USAA, a company that provides financial services exclusively to military veterans as well as their families, due to the former’s “wokeness.” Both corporations are federally insured, and Bank of America was bailed out with billions of dollars in taxpayer funds during the global financial crisis.

Bank of America alerted Eastman in September of 2023 that it would be closing his accounts, a letter obtained by the Daily Caller shows. Shortly thereafter, USAA notified Eastman in November that his two bank accounts with the company would be closed, a separate letter shows.

The article concludes:

A number of red state attorneys general — including from Florida, Iowa, Missouri, Indiana and Montana — voiced their opposition to the de-banking trend after the Daily Caller laid out Eastman’s situation. Many of the state AGs pointed to politics as a potential reason Eastman’s accounts were closed.

“No American should lose their bank account because banks want to play politics. Time and time again, we are seeing banks target and cut off those they disagree with and refuse to explain why. That is unacceptable,” Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird told the Daily Caller.

“De-banking contradicts the very character of our nation, as elites wrongfully use their power to punish their political opponents. Here’s the bottom line: If financial institutions are punishing consumers who don’t fall in line with their political beliefs, that could constitute a violation of both state and federal law,” Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey told the Daily Caller.

Now, Eastman is being prosecuted by Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis as part of her case against Trump. On March 27, a California judge ruled that Eastman should be disbarred due to his legal advice in the wake of the 2020 election. The case will now move to the state Supreme Court for a final decision.

“I just think this is a terrible trend. I think it’s harmful. I think it prohibits people from bringing their values and the public square into the marketplace. And they have every constitutional right under the Free Exercise clause to bring their values into the marketplace. And I think this is also I think this is something we’re just gonna have to fight against,” Sam Brownback, an attorney and former U.S. Senator whose Christian non-profit was de-banked, told the Daily Caller.

Our current government is enacting the Chinese Communist social credit system right before our eyes.

Protecting The Privacy Of Americans

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One of the things that happened after January 6th was that bank transactions and credit card transactions in the Washington, D.C., are were tracked to see who was in Washington on that day. One person I know who went to the rally and then went back to her hotel had her business’ PayPal account canceled essentially because she used her credit card to buy a hamburger. She was never anywhere near the Capitol building. How did PayPal know she was in Washington?

On Friday, The Epoch Times reported the following:

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has subpoenaed Bank of America (BoA) for information over the company’s alleged sharing with the FBI of private customer data from around the time of the Jan. 6, 2021, events in Washington.

The subpoena is part of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government’s probe “into major banks sharing Americans’ private financial data with the [FBI] without legal process for transactions made in the Washington, DC, area around Jan. 6, 2021″—the day that supporters of President Donald Trump breached the U.S. Capitol as Congress was certifying the 2020 election, which the former president has called rigged and stolen. Politico first reported the Nov. 16 development.

The committee subpoenaed relevant documents from the bank, including internal communications about the decision to transfer the information to the FBI, any communications that the bank had with the agency, and any other information. The lawmakers gave Bank of America a June 8 deadline to comply.

The article also notes:

Those who had used Bank of America accounts to purchase a firearm, regardless of when or where the transaction took place, were bumped to the top of that list.

The article includes a possible solution to this obvious invasion of privacy:

However, in a Nov. 16 letter to Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, informing him of the subpoena, Mr. Jordan, who also chairs the Weaponization Select Subcommittee, wrote that, “it is unclear what ‘legal’ process permits the FBI or BoA to share the sensitive customer information of potentially thousands of BoA customers and implicate them in a federal law enforcement investigation without any clear criminal nexus.”

After all, the Ohio congressman wrote, “If such a lawful authority exists, as BoA asserts, for BoA to freely share private financial information without any legal process or specific nexus to criminality, Congress has a responsibility to consider reforms that adequately protect Americans’ information.”

This is something to keep an eye on.

Privacy?

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On Saturday, Townhall posted an article about a subpoena issued by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan to Citibank.

The article reports:

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) issued a subpoena to Citibank over allegations that the company provided private information of customers involved in the January 6 Capitol Hill protests to the weaponized Department of Justice.

The subpoena came after Jordan declared the bank was not cooperating with the Committee’s requests to turn over crucial documentation.

“The Committee and Select Subcommittee have obtained evidence showing that at least one major financial institution provided the FBI with private financial data without legal process,” Jordan wrote to Sunil Garg, CEO of Citibank North America. “Bank of America (BoA) provided the FBI — voluntarily and without any legal process — with a list of individuals who made transactions in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area with a BoA credit or debit card between January 5 and January 7, 2021.”

Jordan’s letter also stated that individuals who previously bought a firearm with a BoA product were moved to the top of that list— regardless of the time or place of the firearm purchase.

The Committee alleges that the bank shared individuals’ private information regarding their accounts with the FBI despite having no criminal past.

Keep in mind that the purchases were tracked because people used their credit cards. How much easier would it be to track the purchases of all Americans if we were using digital currency?

The article concludes:

“These documents suggest that the executive branch was brainstorming informal methods— outside of legal process—for obtaining private customer information from financial institutions,” Jordan’s letter continued.

Jordan has also sought information from JPMorgan, PNC, U.S. Bancorp, Wells Fargo, and Trust Financial Corporation.

“Given this concerning testimony, the Committee has written to other major financial institutions, including Citibank, to determine whether those entities were involved in similar conduct,” he said.

The Ohio congressman hinted at future legislation that would hold financial institutions responsible if they participate in such activity.

I know someone whose PayPal account was closed because she purchased a hamburger with her credit card in Washington on January 6th. She attended the rally, but went back to her hotel afterwards. Sharing credit card records of people who have not committed a crime should be illegal if it is not already. If it is illegal, those who broke the law need to be held accountable.

Is This Acceptable?

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The First Amendment reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

There were thousands of people peacefully assembled in Washington, D.C. on January 6th. Unfortunately there were also a few hundred that decided to riot. However, that does not change the fact that those peacefully assembled had the right to be there. Unfortunately, many of those people who were peacefully assembled are facing consequences for simply being there.

Last night Fox News reported the following:

“Tucker Carlson Tonight” has exclusively obtained evidence that Bank of America, the second-largest bank in the country with more than 60 million customers, is actively but secretly engaged in the hunt for extremists in cooperation with the government. Bank of America is, without the knowledge or the consent of its customers, sharing private information with federal law enforcement agencies. Bank of America effectively is acting as an intelligence agency, but they’re not telling you about it.

In the days after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, Bank of America went through its own customers’ financial and transaction records. These were the private records of Americans who had committed no crime; people who, as far as we know, had absolutely nothing to do with what happened at the Capitol. But at the request of federal investigators, Bank of America searched its databases looking for people who fit a specific profile.

Here’s what that profile was: “1. Customers confirmed as transacting, either through bank account debit card or credit card purchases in Washington, D.C. between 1/5 and 1/6. 2. Purchases made for Hotel/Airbnb RSVPs in DC, VA, and MD after 1/6. 3. Any purchase of weapons or at a weapons-related merchant between 1/7 and their upcoming suspected stay in D.C. area around Inauguration Day. 4. Airline related purchases since 1/6.”

The first thing you should notice about that profile is that it’s remarkably broad. Any purchases of anything in Washington, D.C.; any overnight stay anywhere in an area spanning three jurisdictions and hundreds of miles; any purchase not just of legal firearms, but anything bought from a “weapons-related merchant,” T-shirts included; and any airline-related purchases — not just flights to Washington, but flights to anywhere, from Omaha to Thailand. That is an absurdly wide net.

Bank of America identified a total of 211 customers who met these “thresholds of interest.” At that point, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” has learned, Bank of America turned over the results of its internal scan to federal authorities, apparently without notifying the customers who were being spied upon. Federal investigators then interviewed at least one of these unsuspecting people. That person, we’ve learned, hadn’t done anything wrong and was cleared.

The article continues:

It’s not even clear that what Bank of America did is even legal. We spoke to a number of lawyers about this, and some of them told us that what Bank of America did might, in fact, not be legal and could, in fact, be challenged in court. One knowledgeable attorney pointed us to 12 U.S.C. 3403. That’s a federal law that allows banks to tip off the feds to any information that “may be relevant to a possible violation of any statute or regulation.”

Now, the Justice Department instructs federal agents to remind banks of that law and, of course, they do so with maximum aggression. But the question is, what legally constitutes information that may be relevant to a possible crime? Does buying a muffin in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 5 make you a potential domestic extremist? 

According to Bank of America, yes. Yes, it does. 

What we need now is a good class-action suit against Bank of America.

 

A Subtle Way To Infringe On A Constitutional Right

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“America’s 1st Freedom” is a magazine distributed by the National Rifle Association. I am not including a link to the article I am posting about because I can’t find the article electronically although it is in the April 2020 issue of the magazine.

The title of the article is “The New Gun-Control Activism.” It deals with the strategy those who oppose the right of Americans to own guns are using to limit the availability of guns to Americans.

The article notes:

Last year, for example, Connecticut State Treasurer Shawn Wooden, who commands $37 billion in public pension funds, announced plans to pull $30 million worth of shares from civilian firearm manufacturer securities. Wooden also intends to prohibit similar investments in the future and to establish incentives for banks and financial institutions to adopt anti-gun protocols. The proposition was immediately praised by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and other Connecticut politicians who view the divestment from five companies–Clarus Corp., Daicel Corp., Vista Outdoor Inc., Olin Corp., and ammunition maker Northrop Grumman–as a step toward reducing gun violence.

…Wooden also requested that financial bodies disclose their gun-related portfolios when endeavoring to wok with the treasurer’s office. Wooden subsequently selected tow firms, Citibank and Rick Financial Product (both had expressed the desire to be part of the “solution on gun violence”), to take on the roll of senior bankers in Connecticut’s then-forthcoming $890 million general obligation bond sale.

Technically I guess this is legal. It is a very subtle infringement on the Second Amendment and would be very difficult to prove in court. It is also not a new approach. During the Obama administration, the administration put in place guidelines that prevented gun dealers from getting business loans from banks.

On May 19, 2014, The New American reported:

Following the Obama administration’s “Operation Broken Trust,” an operation that began just months into his first term, the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force was created initially to “root out and expose” investment scams. After bringing 343 criminal and 189 civil cases, the task force began looking for other targets.

The task force is a gigantic interagency behemoth, involving not only the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI, but also the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the U.S. Postal Service, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and the U.S. Secret Service.

The next target for the task force was credit card payment processors, such as PayPal, along with porn shops and drug paraphernalia stores. In 2011, it expanded its list of “high risk” businesses to include gun shops. Peter Weinstock, an attorney with Hunton & Williams, explained:

This administration has very clearly told the banking industry which customers they feel represent “reputational risk” to do business with….

Any companies that engage in any margin of risk as defined by this administration are being dropped.

In 2012, Bank of America terminated its 12-year relationship with McMillan Group International, a gun manufacturer in Phoenix, and American Spirit Arms in Scottsdale. Said Joe Sirochman, owner of American Spirit Arms:

At first, it was the bigger guys — gun parts manufacturers or high-profile retailers. Now the smaller mom-and-pop shops are being choked out….

They need their cash [and credit lines] to buy inventory. Freezing their assets will put them out of business.

That’s the whole point, according to Kelly McMillan:

This is an attempt by the federal government to keep people from buying guns and a way for them to combat the Second Amendment rights we have. It’s a covert way for them to control our right to manufacture guns and individuals to buy guns.

With the Obama administration unable to foist its gun control agenda onto American citizens frontally, this is a backdoor approach that threatens the very oxygen these businesses need to breathe. Richard Riese, a senior VP at the American Bankers Association, expanded on the attack through the banks’ back doors:

We’re being threatened with a regulatory regime that attempts to foist on us the obligation to monitor all types of transactions.

All of this is predicated on the notion that the banks are a choke point for all businesses.

How you vote matters.

Keeping Up With The Story

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In August 2014, I posted an article about the Department of Justice (DOJ) under the Obama Administration distributing funds from fines imposed on banks to political leftist groups. The article explains that the Bank of America was forced to pay fines that Countrywide Mortgage and Merrill Lynch had incurred before they were owned by Bank of America.

The article explains what happened to these fines:

The groups benefitting from the lawsuit, according to Investor’s Business Daily, are the National Council of La Raza, Operation Hope, National Community Reinvestment Coalition, and Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America. The money also went to “delinquent borrowers” in Chicago, Oakland, Detroit, Philadelphia and other major “Democrat strongholds.”

“This is a wealth redistribution scheme disguised as a lawsuit,” Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, told The Daily Caller. “And who benefits from the distribution? Interest groups the administration relies on, outside interest groups, allies and politicians in communities trying to benefit as well.”

…La Raza, Operation Hope, National Community Reinvestment Coalition, and Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America have all intimidated banks to give loans to minorities, even if they can’t afford to pay them back.

This was the government equivalent of a mob shakedown.

Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article about this practice.

The article reports:

Emails written by Obama administration Department of Justice officials confirm reports the agency engaged in a systemic effort to funnel money to liberal advocacy organizations from settlements reached with big banks.

The documents, obtained by the House Judiciary Committee as part of an ongoing investigation, reveal the Obama Justice Department effectively skirted Congress’s budgetary authority by requiring that major financial institutions donate to a group of affordable housing nonprofits and legal advocacy organizations as part of settlement agreements resulting from predatory mortgage lending practices.

The internal DOJ documents represent the latest revelation in a two-year investigation spearheaded by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte.

The article at The Daily Caller reports that this practice has been stopped:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a memo banning the DOJ from entering into third party settlement agreements after substantial evidence emerged implicating the Obama DOJ in such practices.

“When the federal government settles a case against a corporate wrongdoer, any settlement funds should go first to the victims and then to the American people — not to bankroll third-party special interest groups or the political friends of whoever is in power,” Sessions said.

The more I learn about some of the actions of the Obama Administration, the more I wonder why Congress did not address some of the wrongdoings as they were going on.

Who Made This Decision?

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On Sunday The Wall Street Journal posted an article about some of the recent bank settlements that were supposed to help consumers. Well, I think consumers were on the list right after political entities.

The article reports:

Imagine if the president of the United States forced America’s biggest banks to funnel hundreds of millions—and potentially billions—of dollars to the corporations and lobbyists who supported his agenda, all while calling it “Main Street Relief.” The public outcry would rightly be deafening. Yet the Obama administration has used a similar strategy to enrich its political allies, advance leftist pet projects, and protect its legacy—and hardly anyone has noticed.

The administration’s multiyear campaign against the banking industry has quietly steered money to organizations and politicians who are working to ensure liberal policy and political victories at every level of government. The conduit for this funding is the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group, a coalition of federal and state regulators and prosecutors created in 2012 to “identify, investigate, and prosecute instances of wrongdoing” in the residential mortgage-backed securities market. In conjunction with the Justice Department, the RMBS Working Group has reached multibillion-dollar settlements with essentially every major bank in America.

The most recent came in April when the Justice Department announced a $5.1 billion settlement with Goldman Sachs. In February Morgan Stanley agreed to a $3.2 billion settlement. Previous targets were Citigroup ($7 billion), J.P. Morgan Chase ($13 billion), and Bank of America, which in 2014 reached the largest civil settlement in American history at $16.65 billion. Smaller deals with other banks have also been announced.

You might expect that maybe some of the money would go into the U.S. Treasury to pay off some of the deficit. Silly person.

The article reports:

…a substantial portion is allocated to private, nonprofit organizations drawn from a federally approved list. Some groups on the list—Catholic Charities, for instance—are relatively nonpolitical. Others—La Raza, the National Urban League, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition and more—are anything but.

…As part of their “consumer relief” penalties, Bank of America and J.P. Morgan Chase must also pay a minimum $75 million to Community Development Financial Institutions—taxpayer-funded groups propped up by the Obama administration as an alternative to payday lenders. “Housing Counseling Agencies” also get at least $30 million. This essentially circumvents Congress’s recent decision to cut $43 million in federal funds routed to these groups through the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The politicians who negotiate the settlements as part of the RMBS Working Group have also directed money to their supporters and states. Illinois’s Democratic attorney general Lisa Madigan announced she had secured $22.5 million from February’s Morgan Stanley deal for her state’s debt-ridden pension funds—a blatant payout to public unions. The deals with J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup yielded a further $344 million for both “consumer relief” and direct payments to pension funds.

The article concludes:

Despite the best efforts of a few principled legislators late last year, Congress missed an opportunity to amend the Justice Department’s funding bill to stop further handouts. Lawmakers now have another opportunity as Congress enters budget negotiation for fiscal year 2017. Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R., Va.) introduced a bill in April that would prevent government officials from enforcing settlements that funnel money to third parties, and it needs to gain wider traction with his colleagues. The political shakedowns disguised as public service must end.]

Is there any doubt that we need a new paradigm in Washington? There was no “Main Street Relief” involved in any of this–there was, however, Washington corruption. It was nothing more than a legal stick-up.

Informed Voters Already Knew This, But Here It Is Again

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This article appeared in the Examiner in December of 2012, but because of the way the media has reported the events involved, it might be news to some people. Just as an aside, here is the YouTube video that explains this beautifully. I have embedded this because I am concerned that it may disappear:

Back to the Examiner. The headline of the Examiner article is, “New study confirms that economy was destroyed by Democrat politicians.” A bit provocative, but actually very accurate.

The article reports:

A new study from the widely respected National Bureau of Economic Research released this week has confirmed beyond question that the left’s race-baiting attacks on the housing market (the Community Reinvestment Act–enacted under Carter, made shockingly more aggressive under Clinton) is directly responsible for imploding the housing market and destroying the economy.

The study painstakingly sorted through failed home loans that caused the housing market collapse and identified an overwhelming connection between them and CRA mortgages.

The article concludes:

-Even The New York Times admitted that there is “little evidence” of any connection between the “Republican” deregulation measures Obama blames, like the Gramm-Bleach-Liley Act (signed into law by a Democrat), and the collapse of the housing market.

But non-Fox media have spent years deliberately and relentlessly inoculating people against the facts, training them to mindlessly blame Bush for being in charge when Democrat policies destroyed the economy. So here we sit, to this day, still watching Obama excuse and shrug off endless economic failures, illegal government takeovers and utter national bankruptcy with zero accountability.

It is important that voters understand what happened here. When you continue to lend money to people who can’t afford to pay it back, you eventually run into problems getting the money back. The Democrats phony charges of racism hurt black and white people and rich and poor people. Their policies were bad for everyone. Unfortunately, Democrats are again putting pressure on banks to relax their lending standards–running the risk of repeating the whole process. It wasn’t the big banks that caused the problem–it was the government and organizations like ACORN putting pressure on banks to make bad loans. Many of the major players in this scandal made millions and moved on to jobs in the Obama Administration.

The Mortgage Settlement

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It’s easier for the government to blame the banks than to take responsibility for their own role in the housing meltdown. CNN Money posted an article today about the settlement reached with five of the largest home loan lenders.

The article reports:

Participating banks: The five mortgage servicers that are parties to the settlement — Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500), Citigroup (C, Fortune 500), Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500) and Ally Financial — will pay a total of $5 billion to the states. Some of that money will go to foreclosed homeowners and the rest to the states.

Federal officials say negotiations are underway to expand the settlement to nine other major servicers, which would raise the overall value of the settlement to $30 billion.

I am not in any way connected to a bank (although I do use them), but this makes me totally furious. On September 28, 2008, Jeff Jacoby at Boston.com stated:

The roots of this crisis go back to the Carter administration. That was when government officials, egged on by left-wing activists, began accusing mortgage lenders of racism and “redlining” because urban blacks were being denied mortgages at a higher rate than suburban whites.

The pressure to make more loans to minorities (read: to borrowers with weak credit histories) became relentless. Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act, empowering regulators to punish banks that failed to “meet the credit needs” of “low-income, minority, and distressed neighborhoods.” Lenders responded by loosening their underwriting standards and making increasingly shoddy loans. The two government-chartered mortgage finance firms,Fannie Mae andFreddie Mac, encouraged this “subprime” lending by authorizing ever more “flexible” criteria by which high-risk borrowers could be qualified for home loans, and then buying up the questionable mortgages that ensued.

I commend the effort to make home ownership available to more people; I object to putting pressue on banks to make bad loans. The fact that the government is now going after the banks they put at risk is the height of chutzpah. Going after the lenders they forced to make bad loans is simply another example of the anti-business attitude of the Obama Administration.

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Facts Are Such Inconvenient Things

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Pinocchio visto da Enrico Mazzanti (1883)

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Yesterday Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article about a recent fact check on some details of one of President Obama’s speeches. After Warren Buffet claimed that his secretary paid more taxes than he did, President Obama began to repeat the claim. Associated Press decided to do some fact-checking.

The article at Hot Air reported the following:

This year, households making more than $1 million will pay an average of 29.1 percent of their income in federal taxes, including income taxes and payroll taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank.

Households making between $50,000 and $75,000 will pay 15 percent of their income in federal taxes.

Lower-income households will pay less. For example, households making between $40,000 and $50,000 will pay an average of 12.5 percent of their income in federal taxes. Households making between $20,000 and $30,000 will pay 5.7 percent.

There is also the fact that if Warren Buffet wants to pay more in taxes, there is a place on his tax return that allows him to do just that. The flip side of this is wondering how many lawyers and accountants he employs to keep his taxes as low as possible. While I am piling on, I would like to refer to a story I posted on September 1 at rightwinggranny explaining that a business move recently made by Warren Buffet will result in Berkshire Hathaway paying a tax rate of 10.5 percent on the $300 million in dividends it will receive each year from Bank of America instead of the normal rate of 35 percent. If Mr. Buffet is so convinced millionaires should pay higher taxes, why did he bother to make that move?

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Warren Buffett And Taxes

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President Barack Obama and Warren Buffett in t...

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On Tuesday there was an editorial in the Wall Street Journal about Warren Buffett and his taxes. I am not linking to the article because it is a subscribers only article.

The editorial staff of the Wall Street Journal points out that despite the fact that he is a strong cheerleader for increasing taxes on the wealthy, Warren Buffett does not practice what he preaches. Recently Mr. Buffett invested in Bank of America. Under normal circumstances, Berkshire Hathaway pays a top federal income tax rate of 35 percent. However, corporations can exclude 70 percent of the dividends they receive from an investment in another corporation. Because of that law, Berkshire will pay a tax rate of 10.5 percent on the $300 million in dividends it will receive each year from Bank of America. The shareholders in Berkshire Hathaway may appreciate this, as well they should, but it really doesn’t sound like the actions of someone who believes that the rich should pay more taxes. Maybe Mr. Buffett thinks that the ‘other’ rich should pay more taxes.

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