New banking regulations ARE GOOD. Thanks to Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)

[sportage]

Elizabeth said she would do it. And she has.
For one, major banks are being forced out of the PAY-DAY LOAN business. New regulations will stop banks from offering the dreaded pay-day loan service at the ridiculous high interest rates that easily trap so many into ongoing loan after loan. And it is interesting the same major banks have, in the past, fought to limit and close down private 3rd party pay-day loan business they felt were too much competition. Now the banks will soon be forced to cease offering pay-day loans on checking accounts with direct deposits.

And more recently, new regulations and major changes on how the bank process checking account transactions.
Before, the banks used a little nasty trick called "stacking". Stacking was a method to impose as many overdraft fees as possible on checking accounts that go over limit.
For example, if you had $500 in the checking account, and say four checks or debits were going to hit that account for that nights processing, the bank would impose "stacking". The debits and checks were re-arranged or "stacked" so that the larger checks would hit first, causing the other smaller items to each generate overdraft fees.

So if you had $500 in the account and four checks coming in that night for, say, $500, $5, $10, $20, that $500 check would stack to post first and the other smaller checks all initiated over draft fees per each item. That would end up as one $500 check paid, and three smaller amount checks all causing $35+ in over draft fees.

With the new regulations, thanks to efforts of Elizabeth Warren who should be elected FU-ing queen of America for her never ending hard work protecting the middle class from the banks and financial institutions greed, the new regulation prevents and stops the banks from their dirty little trick known as "stacking". From now on, major banks MUST process and post checks in order that they hit the account. No more intentional stacking practices by your greedy little banker.
In the scenario above, the account would be hit with only one over draft fee for that $500 item. The other three smaller items would have easily cleared and posted first with an available balance of $500. The $500 check would then bounce, but that would be a lot less in fees $35 x 1 opposed to $35 x 3 used under the "stacking" method.

Is it any wonder she is so hated so by the financial institutions?
And the Koch brothers.

The hell with Hillary.... I want Senators Elizabeth Warren elected God for protecting the middle class. Or elected president would also do.
And I want her face up there on Mt Rushmore, the hell with Ronald Reagan's puss.





I know you know where P&N is.

Anandtech Administrator
KeithTalent

 

[xeemzor]

Shouldn't this be in P&N? Regardless, the payday loan companies and banks are scum and need to be kicked in the nuts.

 

[nehalem256]

Elizabeth said she would do it. And she has.
For one, major banks are being forced out of the PAY-DAY LOAN business. New regulations will stop banks from offering the dreaded pay-day loan service at the ridiculous high interest rates that easily trap so many into ongoing loan after loan. And it is interesting the same major banks have, in the past, fought to limit and close down private 3rd party pay-day loan business they felt were too much competition. Now the banks will soon be forced to cease offering pay-day loans on checking accounts with direct deposits.

And more recently, new regulations and major changes on how the bank process checking account transactions.
Before, the banks used a little nasty trick called "stacking". Stacking was a method to impose as many overdraft fees as possible on checking accounts that go over limit.
For example, if you had $500 in the checking account, and say four checks or debits were going to hit that account for that nights processing, the bank would impose "stacking". The debits and checks were re-arranged or "stacked" so that the larger checks would hit first, causing the other smaller items to each generate overdraft fees.

So if you had $500 in the account and four checks coming in that night for, say, $500, $5, $10, $20, that $500 check would stack to post first and the other smaller checks all initiated over draft fees per each item. That would end up as one $500 check paid, and three smaller amount checks all causing $35+ in over draft fees.

With the new regulations, thanks to efforts of Elizabeth Warren who should be elected FU-ing queen of America for her never ending hard work protecting the middle class from the banks and financial institutions greed, the new regulation prevents and stops the banks from their dirty little trick known as "stacking". From now on, major banks MUST process and post checks in order that they hit the account. No more intentional stacking practices by your greedy little banker.
In the scenario above, the account would be hit with only one over draft fee for that $500 item. The other three smaller items would have easily cleared and posted first with an available balance of $500. The $500 check would then bounce, but that would be a lot less in fees $35 x 1 opposed to $35 x 3 used under the "stacking" method.

Is it any wonder she is so hated so by the financial institutions?
And the Koch brothers.

The hell with Hillary.... I want Senators Elizabeth Warren elected God for protecting the middle class. Or elected president would also do.
And I want her face up there on Mt Rushmore, the hell with Ronald Reagan's puss.

Middle class people don't get pay day loans.

And I would say it is highly questionable to consider someone who has issues with over drafting a checking account middle class either. Want to know an easy way to avoid over draft issues? Don't write checks for more than you have money in your account Hey maybe I should be elected FU-ing King of America for my totally awesome advise.

 

[roguerower]

So the two things she fixed are services that only affect dumbasses and people who can't manage their money?

Yea, she's doing great. Tell me when she fixes the fact that banks are getting government loans for almost free and then turning them around on students and making them pay 7%.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Middle class people don't get pay day loans.

And I would say it is highly questionable to consider someone who has issues with over drafting a checking account middle class either. Want to know an easy way to avoid over draft issues? Don't write checks for more than you have money in your account Hey maybe I should be elected FU-ing King of America for my totally awesome advise.

Self perception: People who make between $20k and $250k a year generally all consider themselves middle-class. Everybody wants to be middle class because they consider it the quintessential American thing.

So a politician says "blah blah blah middle class" and 98% of the people in the room go, "Oh, hey, she's talking to ME!"

The constant stress of being poor, and having to make crappy decisions about whether to pay the rent or buy groceries, actually inhibits good decision-making. Drops your IQ about 15 points.

Brains are funny.

 

[realibrad]

Brains are funny.

And they taste oh so good!

 

[nehalem256]

The constant stress of being poor, and having to make crappy decisions about whether to pay the rent or buy groceries, actually inhibits good decision-making. Drops your IQ about 15 points.

Which would suggest that if we want to help the poor we should create a society with clearly delineated values, so they have fewer decisions to make.

Unfortunately this pretty much the exact opposite of the direction society has gone in the last 50 years :\

 

[smackababy]

Hmm, OP makes a post giving a bunch of "what this person has done" and provides zero actual evidence of any doing.

 

[glenn1]

While I think that payday lenders are a morally questionable business, their effective rates are still lower than the alternative in some cases. Sure, you may have paid $10 service fee to get a $100 payday loan and that's a horrendous rate when annualized, but it's a shit ton less than what the annualized rate would have been had your check bounced and you got a $35 NSF fee from the bank and another from whomever you wrote the check to.

As far as stacking, so long as it was specified in the policy whether the bank would pay the largest or smallest incoming checks first I don't have a problem with it. After all, the largest check might have been the most important one to ensure got paid. I would favor allowing customers the option to pick which order checks will be paid in however, either smallest-largest or vice versa. Kinda like what they did with debit cards and allowing for an 'opt-in' for whether your card would be declined or not when you attempted to make a purchase exceeding available funds.

 

[BUnit1701]

Hmm, OP makes a post giving a bunch of "what this person has done" and provides zero actual evidence of any doing.

Its quite fascinating, like in the OP's dream world Pocahantas must have unilateral power to write and enact law, and in fact already has.

Secondly, I think 'stacking' must already be a solved problem as U.S. Bank agreed to settle rather than fight a class-action lawsuit about it.
http://www.usbankoverdraftsettlement.com/

 

[Oldgamer]

So she does some good things, takes steps in the right direction and some of you guys are complaining? wow..

These are the same folks who say the homeless were ungrateful.. yet you show just how ungrateful you are by not giving her credit for going in the right direction.

 

[smackababy]

So she does some good things, takes steps in the right direction and some of you guys are complaining? wow..

These are the same folks who say the homeless were ungrateful.. yet you show just how ungrateful you are by not giving her credit for going in the right direction.

Considering it wasn't just her that did , if any, of what the op claimed, she certainly can't be given all the credit. Also, the OP provides zero sources she did any of this. If you expect me to research your claims, they get zero credit.

Also, fuck those homeless scum. They should be ground into a paste to feed to the elderly.

 

[bradley]

Little bandaids are a bunch of bullshit. Repeal Dodd-Frank, reinstate Glass-Steagall and even then, the horse is already out of the barn and will take several decades to reign it completely back into that barn. If you want to keep pretending and living in fantasy, at least go lock yourself into a movie theatre somewhere.

 

[Cozarkian]

Banks are still doing this? I thought they stopped 2-4 years ago after the various class action lawsuits. For example, the one that cost CitizenBank $137.5 million in settlement. http://www.responsiblelending.org/t...k-to-Pay-137-5M-to-Settle-Overdraft-Suit.html

And the one that cost BoA $410 million http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/07/bank-of-america-overdraft_n_1079924.html

But hey, who can blame her for wanting to take credit for something the market already solved. Admittedly, it is a good law to have on the books anyway, but it's not some brilliant law that she fought tooth-and-nail to pass.

 

[Oldgamer]

Little bandaids are a bunch of bullshit. Repeal Dodd-Frank, reinstate Glass-Steagall and even then, the horse is already out of the barn and will take several decades to reign it completely back into that barn. If you want to keep pretending and living in fantasy, at least go lock yourself into a movie theatre somewhere.

But the Republicans are not going to let her do much more than "little bandaids" sadly. Good luck with this non existent Congress in getting Glass Steagall reinstated to what it was. Dodd-Frank has been gutted and all the real teeth taken out of it that it is worthless legislation.

----------------------------------

Quote from Dylan Ratigan on this subject:

"The Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, sponsored by Republican Representatives Phil Gramm of Texas, Jim Leach of Iowa, and Thomas Bliley of Virginia, revoked the rule, established after the stock market crash of 1929, that no one company could act as a traditional bank, a Wall Street investment firm, and an insurance company at the same time.

Now a single bank could take your money for safekeeping and use it as collateral to fund investments in high-risk securities with no supervision, all the while insuring itself against losses that taxpayers must pay if the bets the banks made with our money went bad. In 2000 the Commodity Futures Modernization Act officially deregulated the derivatives market. Sponsored by Senator Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana, and cosponsored by Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, among others, the new law stated that because derivatives were deals between “sophisticated parties” presumed to know what they were getting into, they did not need any oversight at all. In the Frontline episode “The Warning,” which aired on October 20, 2009, Michael Greenberger, former director of the Commodity Futures Trade Commission, explained, “Now this is an unregulated market: no transparency , no capital reserve requirements, no prohibition on fraud, no prohibition on manipulation, no regulation of intermediaries. All the fundamental templates that we learned from the Great Depression that are needed to have markets function smoothly are gone.”

 

[bradley]

It's almost impossible to raise any awareness in this know-it-all gruff football/cowboy culture. When helmets clash midfield is the only time anyone has a meeting of minds. Yee-haw!

We have otherwise educated people in this forum arguing against Glass-Steagall, which is like arguing for removing all firewalls from the entire Internet. It's obvious that they only know from whatever news blurbs tell them and/or the advertising and marketing that makes them 'feel good.'

No way is the US Govt. going to reinstate the firewall between commercial banks and their investment and insurance arms from the kindness of the hearts. It's going to take increasing awareness and pressure from the voting public. The odds look pretty bleak for the American public, but pretty great for business as usual.

Again, while the American public is preoccupied with fabricated Hollywood bullshit, absolutely *no one* is minding the store. Period.

 

[Oldgamer]

Here is the Frontline Documentary on this Warning concerning all the deregulation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNauz_Fd0NQ

 

[Mxylplyx]

I've noticed a consistent theme among conservative thinkers, and I used to be one, that it's OK to prey on poor or uninformed people because they must deserve it. It's part of the incessant need many people have to see others suffer for their bad decisions so they can inflate their own sense of self righteousness.

 

[bradley]

Just conservatives or Republicans? There's that left-right thing again. These basic banking regulations and firewalls (since 1999 under the Clinton Adminstration) continue to be disabled under the Obama Adminstration and will continue into the next Administration. At this rate, we will be celebrating the roaring nineteen twenties forever.

Even Ivy League Wall Street whizzes had trouble completely explaining the math behind the complex financial derivatives and instruments they were selling, so I don't expect the general public to get it either. We're all suffering, the informed and uninformed alike.

Just make 'reinstate Glass-Steagall' the new meme or mantra and cross your fingers. Maybe Hollywood or Madison Avenue can make a clever campaign; they'll pretty much do anything you ask for enough money.

 

[hal2kilo]

I've noticed a consistent theme among conservative thinkers, and I used to be one, that it's OK to prey on poor or uninformed people because they must deserve it. It's part of the incessant need many people have to see others suffer for their bad decisions so they can inflate their own sense of self righteousness.

Hey, being smug is fun.

 

[Zebo]

Doh

 

[Fern]

Elizabeth said she would do it. And she has.
-snip-

I can't find where she has done anything other than endorse an idea from the USPS Inspector general that USPS branches enter into the payday loan (and other routine bank functions) business. So, she's not stopping payday loans, merely supporting the USPS to get into the business. Also, seems a big reason for this is that many small communities don't have any regular banking branches in them. If there's no branches there banks can't be gouging those people.

Also:

1. I've never heard of big banks being in the payday loans business.

2. Payday loans look to be already outlawed in many states. E.g., they are prohibited in my state (NC). (This may be why I've never heard of a big bank doing payday loans.) http://www.paydayloaninfo.org/state-information/41

Small loans are always going to be expensive. I think the paperwork required by govt regulations is the same for $500 and $500,000. To get a $500 loan for a month annualized at 10% means a fee of about $4. That's not going to happen.

Fern

 

[Zebo]

I've noticed a consistent theme among conservative thinkers, and I used to be one, that it's OK to prey on poor or uninformed people because they must deserve it. It's part of the incessant need many people have to see others suffer for their bad decisions so they can inflate their own sense of self righteousness.

Democrats do same thing. Hell they created whole generations of unemployable individuals with no self respect with no will to better themselves putting them on the victim welfare plantation for votes. They did, glass segal, hedge fun manager loopholes, outsourcing which hurts their so-called "disenfranchised" most.

Republicans - "We'll fuck you... vote for us"
Democrats - "We love you..but we'll still fuck you...vote for us"

There are exceptions of course. Like this wonderful woman. I like Rand Paul on the other side.

 

[bradley]

There are exceptions of course. Like this wonderful woman. I like Rand Paul on the other side.

Elizabeth Warren isn't completely wonderful, especially not this watered-down version. They pretty much extinguished her flame years ago.

And not to digress, but she also has demonstrated that very bright people can be incredibly stupid. Although, I don't know who ultimately loses with claims of being American Indian, her lying in order to better gain entrance into U. Penn and Harvard. And then dusting off and repeating the lie to better gain entrance into the US Senate.

http://elizabethwarrenwiki.org/elizabeth-warren-native-american-cherokee-controversy/

Don't get me wrong, I have appreciated her intentions in the past. But fool me once shame on you....

 

[werepossum]

Self perception: People who make between $20k and $250k a year generally all consider themselves middle-class. Everybody wants to be middle class because they consider it the quintessential American thing.

So a politician says "blah blah blah middle class" and 98% of the people in the room go, "Oh, hey, she's talking to ME!"

The constant stress of being poor, and having to make crappy decisions about whether to pay the rent or buy groceries, actually inhibits good decision-making. Drops your IQ about 15 points.

Brains are funny.

Yup. And on the other end of the spectrum we have people with household incomes in the high six figures/top 2% also insisting that they too are middle class (if not dead broke.) Although historically, the middle class was the class between the working class (generally peasant farmers) and the gentry, so there's some justification for it. (Although nowadays the master electrician bringing home $80K would justifiably laugh at claims of superiority from assistant managers earning half that.)

And they taste oh so good!

While I think that payday lenders are a morally questionable business, their effective rates are still lower than the alternative in some cases. Sure, you may have paid $10 service fee to get a $100 payday loan and that's a horrendous rate when annualized, but it's a shit ton less than what the annualized rate would have been had your check bounced and you got a $35 NSF fee from the bank and another from whomever you wrote the check to.

As far as stacking, so long as it was specified in the policy whether the bank would pay the largest or smallest incoming checks first I don't have a problem with it. After all, the largest check might have been the most important one to ensure got paid. I would favor allowing customers the option to pick which order checks will be paid in however, either smallest-largest or vice versa. Kinda like what they did with debit cards and allowing for an 'opt-in' for whether your card would be declined or not when you attempted to make a purchase exceeding available funds.

I can applaud Fauxcahontas for ending stacking, but I really don't see the problem with pay day loans. If you're broke and need cash to repair a car that gets you to work, replace a broken pair of glasses, get Junior into Little League, pay a deposit on an apartment, or whatever is vitally important to you, the availability of such short term, high interest loans can be a lifesaver. Sure it's a high interest rate, but it's a small amount of money, and such loans are not economically feasible at low interest rates. If forced to choose between having my life wrecked over a low interest loan I can't get or not having my life wrecked via a high interest rate loan, seems like a pretty simple choice to me - and if I screw it up, that's on me, not my lender who owes me nothing but an honest transaction.