Is It in My Head?

Sign the Petition: Allow Post Offices to Offer Basic Banking Services

www.credomobilize.com

My name is Brianna Tong, and I’m a student at the University of Chicago. I’m a leader in our on-campus organization, Southside Solidarity Network, and in the IIRON Student Network, because I want to win economic and racial justice for all people, and that young people will be at the forefront of a movement to make that happen.

Predatory check cashing and payday lending companies have been exploiting working class Americans for decades, by charging outrageous fees and triple digit interest rates. But now we have a chance to give the millions of Americans without access to affordable basic financial services a fair, publicly owned alternative to payday lenders and big banks.

Senator Elizabeth Warren has an exciting new proposal that would allow post offices around the country to offer basic financial services like check cashing and bill paying.

According to study released in January by the United States Postal Service’s Inspector General, 68 million Americans – nearly 1 in 4 households -- are underserved by banks and forced to rely on exploitative and wildly expensive payday lenders. Many of these people spend as much as $2,400 each year on inflated interest rates and unnecessary fees.

Across the globe, countries like Japan, Germany and Kenya have had great success with postal banking. And for more than 50 years, post offices in the United States were also allowed to offer banking services. Despite the program’s widespread success, both at providing banking services and generating billions of dollars in revenue for the United States Postal Service, Congress ended the program in 1967.

Given the lack of access to affordable banking services currently experiences by tens of millions of Americans, Congress needs take immediate action to enact Senator Warren’s proposal to bring a public option for financial services back to the United States.

While there’s been a lot of buzz lately about Senator Warren’s postal banking proposal, it needs support in Congress to become law. By signing my petition you can help build that support and add real momentum to the fight for postal banking.

• http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116374/postal-service-banking-how-usps-can-save-itself-and-help-poor
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-warren/coming-to-a-post-office-n_b_4709485.html
• http://www.npr.org/2014/02/07/272652648/post-office-could-rack-up-billions-by-offering-money-services
• http://www.thenation.com/article/178361/why-we-need-bank-post-office#
• http://www.uspsoig.gov/sites/default/files/document-library-files/2014/rarc-wp-14-007.pdf

Firrea is unusually crafted, as it requires a criminal violation like wire fraud or mail fraud to set off the law’s penalties. But because it is a civil statute, it requires a lower burden of proof than criminal charges — finding guilt by a preponderance of the evidence versus beyond a reasonable doubt.

That broad authority has alarmed some defense lawyers, who have argued that the Justice Department has stretched the application of Firrea far beyond its original intent. Bank of America, in a motion to dismiss its case, described the prosecution as having “a wildly expansive reading” of the law.

Other critics question whether the government is overcompensating for the lack of criminal cases against Wall Street. Firrea’s civil actions are a cop-out, the critics say, since not one senior Wall Street executive has been charged criminally for a role in the crisis. The same office that employs Mr. Weidman — the United States attorney’s office in Los Angeles — has come under fire for dropping a criminal investigation of Angelo Mozilo, the former chief executive of Countrywide Financial, one of the biggest mortgage lenders before the financial crisis.

Some investigators at the Securities and Exchange Commission, which file civil cases against big banks, have also raised objections. Federal prosecutors, the S.E.C. officials privately grouse, are encroaching on their turf.

“Realistically, for the Justice Department, the civil cases are a Plan B,” said Stavros Gadinis, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, law school who focuses on financial regulation.

The federal government’s deployment of the little-used law has inspired comparisons to Eliot Spitzer’s novel use of the Martin Act as a cudgel against fraud. As New York’s attorney general, Mr. Spitzer harnessed the powerful 1921 state law to pursue suspected wrongdoing at large Wall Street firms like Merrill Lynch.

Firrea carries similar potency. In addition to the lower burden of proof, it allows prosecutors to bring cases that take aim at misconduct as far back as 10 years — a generous statute of limitations compared with five years for criminal securities fraud. And in pursuing a Firrea lawsuit, prosecutors are allowed not only to issue subpoenas, but also to take the sworn testimony of individuals.

It also provides for hefty fines. The Justice Department used the law to sue S.& P. for more than $5 billion, accusing it of knowingly issuing misleading ratings on mortgage-backed securities. JPMorgan’s tentative $13 billion settlement over its sale of shoddy mortgage securities would be a record — a single company has never before paid that much to the government.

Defense lawyers say that Firrea gives the government a game-changing weapon in pursuing civil cases against banks.

“In retrospect, it’s surprising that prosecutors have waited so long to happen upon such a powerful statute,” said Susan E. Brune, a former federal prosecutor and now a partner at Brune & Richard.

In the letter, Senator Warren highlights the enforcement record of the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP), which is responsible for overseeing the bailouts of the financial industry and whose enforcement staff and budget from 2009-2012 were only a fraction of those at the Fed, SEC and OCC. The letter specifically requests:

1. The number of individuals your agency has charged criminally, including the number of senior officials you have charged;
2. The number of criminal convictions your agency has obtained;
3. The number of prison sentences your agency has secured;
4. The number of individuals your agency has charged civilly, including the number of senior officers you have charged;
5. The number of individuals your agency has suspended or permanently banned from working in the financial industry or elsewhere; and
6. The total amount of funds your agency has obtained through civil judgment or orders of restitution.

"There have been some landmark settlements in recent weeks for which your agencies and others deserve substantial credit," Senator Warren writes. "However, a great deal of work remains to be done to hold institutions and individuals accountable for breaking the rules and to protect consumers and taxpayers from future violations.  Strong enforcement is an important deterrent, and I believe transparency is critical."

"Liberals Break With Obama on 'Clean' CR - 218"...

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Grijalva said he would whip the Congressional Progressive Caucus to vote against the CR that maintains the sequester.

...Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chairmen Raúl M. Grijalva of Arizona and Keith Ellison of Minnesota said they would whip their nearly 75 members against any CR that maintains the sequester.

“I think the stance should have been, ‘This is the time to turn around the economy, and this is what we need to do, it’s reflected in my budget, it was reflected in the original Senate budget,’ the president could have said,” Grijalva said. “I wish [Obama] had taken a different position.”

Liberal appropriators complain that Obama has become complicit in keeping the sequester in place.

“I disagree with the White House and I have told the White House that I disagree,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said. “$988 billion makes us complicit in the sequestration. … I don’t believe Democrats should stand for that [and] I think the White House should not be complicit either.”

Rep. James P. Moran, D-Va., who like DeLauro is a senior appropriator and member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said Thursday he was “surprised” at the president’s position and that he was “wrong” to take that stance.

We can’t afford a future without credit unions. If we show the banks just how much this desperate gamble will backfire, the threat of bad publicity and another banking scandal will cause the banks to rethink their pricy lobbying push. Large-scale protests have forced banks to change their tune before, and once word gets out about the banks’ incredible greed, the backlash should send them packing.

Anytime that regulation is mentioned, bankers like to cry out about free-market principles. But banks use an army of lobbyists to shape legislation as they see fit. This time, they’ve gone too far in trying to take out the competition. If we all step up today, we can stop this in its tracks, and save consumer-friendly credit unions from extinction.

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In 2009 Wells Fargo began foreclosure proceedings against Larry Delassus based upon a typo they had made. Even after admitting to their mistake, Wells Faro continued to sue Mr. Delassus over "missed" payments as of a result of their error. Payments Delassus NEVER actually owed Wells Fargo. "On the morning of Dec. 19, 2012, in a Torrance courtroom, Delassus' heart stopped as he watched his attorney argue his negligence and discrimination case against banking behemoth Wells Fargo. Friends say he didn't die of heart disease that day in court, as the coroner found. He was, they believe, killed by a system so inhumane that it could not undo a devastating piece of red tape the system itself created."

But in a statement on Thursday, the Justice Department said it “ultimately concluded that the burden of proof to bring a criminal case could not be met based on the law and facts as they exist at this time.” The agency said it would pursue the case again if new evidence emerged.