Wells Fargo, City Bank and so many others are the beneficiaries of the
Laws of this Great Nation. The same Laws that are in place to crush
the Edward Snowdens' of the nation. I see that five people were
gunned down in Burlington, Washington yesterday. The man, still on
the loose, used and assault rifle. Meanwhile we are spending more and
more on "protecting" Americans from Terrorists. The truth is that we
cannot protect all Americans from Terrorists. We only protect the
very wealthy and their financial holdings around the world.
And of course, guess who is profiting from this War on Terror.
Carl Jarvis
On 9/23/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I have had my own personal experience with Wells Fargo when I sold my house
and purchased my apartment. With encouragement from my real estate agent
and
her associate from Wells Fargo and my own stupidity, I was lured into
borrowing hundreds of thousands of dollars and I paid incredible amounts of
interest to Wells Fargo and City Bank. But even though I was vulnerable and
stupid, I managed to say no to the Wells Fargo person's urging to take on
an
even more detrimental loan. When it was all over, Wells Fargo was urging me
to pay an annual fee to keep my credit line from the repaid loan open in
case I needed more money. As far as I'm concerned, the whole bank should be
dismantled.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Friday, September 23, 2016 10:36 AM
To: blind-democracy
Subject: [blind-democracy] Democracy Now has excerpts of Senator Elizabeth
Warren grilling John G. Stumpf
I would actually like to listen to the entire Hearing, but the excerpts on
this morning's Democracy Now, with Senator Elizabeth Warren questioning
John
G. Stumpf, CEO of Wells Fargo, warmed my heart. Too bad something good
won't come of it. But it's no secret that John G. Stumpf is a member of
the
Honest to Goodness Real First Class Corporate Americans, and as such he is
protected from the very laws which he loves to hammer the rest of us with.
following is part of an article by Michael Hiltzik:
Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf offers a clinic in how to weasel out of real
accountability Wells Fargo Chairman and CEO John G. Stumpf, who has been
described as “the Mr. Clean of banking,” took his unflappable and
well-groomed mien Tuesday to a hearing room on Capitol Hill to defend the
bank against allegations that it had massively defrauded millions of its
customers.
Amazingly, he made himself and his bank look worse. This underscores the
question we asked just a day ago:
Why does he still have a job?
The context of this question is the disclosure that Wells Fargo bankers
opened as many as 2 million fake accounts in the names of existing
customers
and others, without their knowledge and permission, and stonewalled their
inquiries and complaints. The scam went on from at least 2011 through 2015,
though Stumpf revealed that the bank is now reexamining accounts from as
early as 2009. On Sept. 8, it announced an agreement to pay $185 million in
fines and penalties to two federal regulators and the Los Angeles City
Attorney’s office.
You should resign. You should give back the money that you took while this
scam was going on, and you should be criminally investigated.— Sen.
Elizabeth Warren confronts Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf
The bank’s explanation has been that this was all a scheme mysteriously
concocted by “rogue” employees coast-to-coast, of whom 5,300 have been
fired. Stumpf denied on the stand, as he has in interviews, that the root
cause of the outbreak of dishonesty was Wells Fargo’s relentless pressure
on
low-level bankers to “cross-sell” products — push credit cards, personal
loans and other deals — upon all customers. He stoutly denied that the
company’s “culture” contributed to the problem.
The company’s sales goal was as high as eight accounts per customer, vastly
more than rival banks thought reasonable, and it ceaselessly boasted to
investors of its cross-selling success as evidence of its expertise in
retail banking. Let’s call this by its proper name, as did committee
ranking
member Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio): “I call it fraud because I got tired of the
euphemisms a long time ago.”
On the whole, Stumpf’s performance Tuesday followed the standard playbook
for beleaguered CEOs: He mechanically offered contrite apologies, swore to
rectify the fraud and not let it happen again, and vowed personally to
“accept full responsibility for all unethical sales practices in our retail
banking business.”
The hollowness of this pledge was promptly punctured by Sen. Elizabeth
Warren (D-Mass.). Here’s how that went:
“Since this massive years-long scam came to light, you have said
repeatedly,
quote: ‘I am accountable,’ ” she observed. “But what have you actually done
to hold yourself accountable? Have you resigned as CEO or chairman of Wells
Fargo?”
He started to reply, “The board — ”
“Have you resigned?”
“No, I have not.”
“All right. Have you returned one nickel of the millions of dollars that
you
were paid while this scam was going on?”
“Well, first of all,” Stumpf blustered, “this was by 1% of our people, and—
and — ”
“That’s not my question,” Warren interrupted. “My question is about
responsibility. Have you returned one nickel of the millions of dollars
that
you were paid while this scam was going on?”
“The board will take care of that.”
“Have you returned one nickel of the money you earned while this scam was
going on?”
“The board will — ”
“I will take that as a ‘no,’ then.”
Warren further probed whether Stumpf had fired a single senior executive
over the scam. The answer was no.
“OK. So you haven’t resigned, you haven’t returned a single nickel of your
personal earnings, you haven’t fired a single senior executive.
Instead, your
definition of accountable is to push the blame to your low-level employees
who don’t have the money for a fancy PR firm to defend themselves. It’s
gutless leadership.”
She concluded her questioning with the bluntest assessment of the day:
“You should resign. You should give back the money that you took while this
scam was going on, and you should be criminally investigated by both the
Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission.”
As Warren and other committee members on both sides of the aisle pointed
out, Wells Fargo didn’t seem to take serious steps to rectify the damage
done to customers, first revealed in 2013 by The Times, until it started to
face pressure from regulators. Stumpf touted the bank’s decision to hire
consultants at PricewaterhouseCoopers to help determine the scope of the
problem — but that happened in August 2015, years after it knew a problem
existed.
Under Brown’s questioning, Stumpf revealed that it took that step not on
its
own, but “in consultation” with federal regulators and the L.A.
City Attorney’s
office, which was investigating. In other words, Wells Fargo had to be
goaded into seeking outside help.
“It never occurred to you to bring in somebody?” Brown asked.
“It was early in 2015,” Stumpf replied, “that we finally connected a dot.”
Nor has the bank ever disclosed in its public filings to the SEC that its
activities were under investigation. Stumpf explained that it considered
the
problem immaterial. In strictly financial terms, that may be true: The bank
collects revenue of about $90 billion a year and profits of more than $20
billion.
But the damage to its reputation and future profitability may be enormous;
treating this as “immaterial” and sweeping it under the rug was clearly a
bad and dishonest call. But Wells Fargo still wishes to trivialize the
matter. “I disagree with the fact that this is a massive fraud,”
Stumpf said.
The questions from Senate Banking Committee members that Stumpf refused to
answer directly may have outnumbered those to which he did offer a
response.
Asked whether he thought fraud had been committed, he pleaded that he is
not
a lawyer. He was vague about when he first learned of his bankers’
“unethical”
conduct, although he met weekly with Carrie Tolstedt, the much-lauded
executive who led the division where the conduct occurred.
