Thursday, March 14, 2019
Wells Fargo Redux
A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful interests. . . and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks,.
— John Calhoun, May 27, 1836 Speech
Herewith an update on the arcane world of banking as practiced by Wells Fargo, the fourth largest bank in the United States.
The update is prompted by a story about the bank in the New York Times on March 9, 2019, and by an appearance by Timothy Sloan, the bank’s president, before the House Financial Services Committee, on March 12, 2019.
The unfavorable publicity is not new, nor are the bank practices that are, to its critics, like honey to flies. Its previous bad practices have been widely reported. Their continued practices, although transmogrified, continue to be bad practices.
In 2016, we learned that the bank had opened more than 3.4 million fake accounts for customers, in order to meet sales goals. We learned that individuals who received car loans from the bank, were sold car insurance when the loans were made, whether or not it was needed by the borrower. The Wall Street Journal reported that the bank’s employees had overcharged customers for foreign exchange fees transactions.
The bad practices did not go unrewarded, although the bad practices were on a two-way street. On the positive side, from the bank’s perspective, the bank and the complicit employees, generated lots of revenue from the fraudulent practices. On the negative side the bank paid state and federal fines and penalties of $1.5 billion. In addition, it paid $620 million to settle the claims made against it by defrauded customers. It also apologized for the fact that it had charged 570,000 customers who took out auto loans with the bank, for auto insurance they didn’t need.
Some hoped that the light of day that had shined on the bank’s practices might cause the fourth largest bank in the United States to mend its ways. According to some employees, as reported in the New York Times story, bad practices persist. According to Mr. Sloan’s testimony before the House Financial Services Committee, on the other hand, things have greatly improved. Readers can decide for themselves who is right.
According to the Times report, bank employees are no longer opening fake accounts or selling unsuspecting customers unneeded car insurance. However, employees who spoke to the NYT report that in many branches employees are under great pressure to bend the rules to meet performance goals. In one branch that has a large debt collection practice, employees are expected to make 30 calls an hour and recoup $34,000 in overdue debts during that 60-minute period. It would be interesting to listen in on a 120 second telephone call between a creditor and a debtor in which the creditor not only explains to the debtor the reason for the call, but shows the debtor how to make the past due payment during the call. If nothing else, the practice gives new meaning to the term “fast talker.”
Six days after the New York Times’ report was published, Wells Fargo’s president, Timothy Sloan was in Washington testifying before the House Financial Services Committee. He had been summoned by the Committee in order to satisfy the members’ curiosity as to how the bank had reformed itself following the earlier scandals. The NYT report was no help to him.
Throughout the hearing the report was referred to by members of the Committee. In responding to questions about the bank’s practices and whether the bank could improve, Mr. Sloan said: “I can’t promise you perfection, but what I can promise you is that the changes we’ve implemented since I’ve become C.E.O. will prevent harm the best we can.” In response to a question of why it had taken a long time for the bank to refund money to customers to whom it had sold car insurance they didn’t need, he suggested there had been “give and take” with the comptroller as to how much to refund. (Had I been the purchaser of such insurance I would have not had any difficulty letting the bank know how much I should get back, with interest, without needing the assistance of the comptroller.)
During his testimony, Mr. Sloan said the bank “had examined 160 million accounts and contacted more than 50 million customers to make sure we’ve made things right, and I believe we have.” Mr. Sloan was telling the Committee that the bank had examined accounts numbering almost one-half of the total population of the United State That sounds as plausible as the idea that a bank debt collector can make 30 successful debt collection calls in one hour. It all goes to show why this writer is not in the banking business. Or perhaps it goes to show that Wells Fargo continues to have unrealistic expectations of its employees, and an exalted view of its operations as expressed by its president.
Monday, March 4, 2019
The Great Imitator
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
— Charles Caleb Colton, Many Things in A Few Words 1824
It was a brilliant move. He one upped Alec Baldwin of Saturday Night Live (SNL) who has become famous for his impersonations of Mr. Trump, impersonations that have repeatedly raised the ire of Mr. Trump. In a moment that no one would have ever expected, Mr. Trump preempted SNL by his performance on Saturday March 2, 1919, in front of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CACI). But I get ahead of myself.
Fans of SNL remember with pleasure its pre-Christmas show modelled after “It’s a Wonderful Life.” On SNL it was called “It’s a Wonderful Trump” and it raised the ire of Mr. Trump who took to his favorite medium, Twitter, in order to criticize SNL. In his tweet, Mr. Trump said: “A REAL scandal is the one-sided coverage, hour by hour, of networks like NBC & Democrat spin machines like Saturday Night Live. . . Should be tested in courts, can’t be legal? Only defame & belittle! Collusion?”
Mr. Trump’s threats notwithstanding, SNL continued to make fun of Mr. Trump through, among other means, media medium, Alec Baldwin, whose impersonations of Mr. Trump are so convincing that they are a source of endless amusement for viewers of SNL.
With unaccustomed prescience, Mr. Trump took the air out of any impersonation that might have been contemplated by Alec Baldwin, to mark the end of a week that was one of the least successful weeks of the Trump presidency, a no mean feat given some of its other weeks. The week of February 24th could easily be described as “The Week That Was.”
It was the week in which Mr. Trump’s torrid love affair with Mr. Kim of North Korea, came to a screeching halt.
It was the week in which his former very best friend and personal lawyer described Mr. Trump as a “racist, con-man and cheat” and, in an extensive public hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform gave what can only be described as an unflattering portrait of Mr. Trump.
It was the week in which the fake news New York Times reported that Jared Kushner’s top secret security clearance was given him because Mr. Trump ordered that he be given that clearance over the objections of top security officials in his administration.
And as if all that wasn’t enough to give Mr. Trump heartburn, Fred and Cindy Warmbier, the parents of Otto Warmbier, who were Mr. Trump’s guests at the State of the Union speech, publicly took issue with Mr. Trump’s comments on their son’s death following his meeting with Mr. Kim. Mr. Trump said that Mr. Kim “felt badly about it. . . . He tells me that he didn’t know about it and I will take him at his word.” Responding to that, the Warmbiers said Kim and his evil regime are responsible for unimaginable cruelty and inhumanity. No excuses or lavish praise can change that.”
All in all, the events of the week offered Alec Baldwin great opportunities to imitate Mr. Trump were he to be on SNL. Not wanting to be preempted, a few short hours before SNL was to air on March 2, 2019, Mr. Trump gave a speech to the CPAC that was held outside Washington. Mr. Trump viewed the speech as an opportunity to upstage Mr. Baldwin, in the event Mr. Baldwin intended to make fun of him on the SNL episode that was to air a few hours after Mr. Trump spoke The effort was a greater success than anyone could have imagined.
After Mr. Trump had been introduced by the master of ceremonies, Mr. Trump came on stage applauding himself (as is his custom whenever he makes an appearance.) He stopped applauding himself for a moment and then, recalling how Alec Baldwin would stage this entry, he went to the stand on which an American flag was in place and in a consummate imitation of Alec Baldwin, put his arms around the flag and hugged it as if to make sure it could not get away. Once it was firmly in his arms he gazed at the audience with the kind of goofy smile that only he and Mr. Baldwin are really good at. When he was finished hugging the flag, he sauntered over to the podium and began his speech which was, for the first ten minutes, the scripted speech that had been prepared for him to read. For the next 1 hour and 50 minutes he adlibbed random comments, delivering them in the way that Mr. Baldwin does when imitating him on SNL. At one point during his speech, he displayed a bit of prescience by saying he was going to regret his speech. He may. The rest of us can only regret the fact that Mr. Baldwin did not make an appearance on SNL that day so we could compare the performance of the two actors while Mr. Trump’s performance was fresh in our minds. As a result, we have to content ourselves with recalling Mr. Trump’s brilliant, if lengthy, imitation of Mr. Baldwin. Who’d have thought he had it in him.
Thursday, January 31, 2019
Suffer Little lChildren . . . .
Amo, amas,
I love a lass,
As a cedar tall and slender;
Sweet cowslip’s grace,
Is her nominative case,
And she’s of the feminine gender!
— John O’Keefe, The Agreeable Surprise, (1783)
January was a bad month for the LGBTQ community. First it was Mississippi that made a brief appearance in the United States Supreme Court. Then it was Karen Pence, the vice-president’s wife, who made an appearance in the media. And, finally, the armed services made a brief appearance in the United States Supreme Court.
It began with news on January 8, 2019, when a majority of the United States Supreme Court declined to get involved in a lawsuit challenging a law passed by the Mississippi legislature in 2016. In that year the legislature said, among other things, that it was alright for state employees and private businesses to refuse services to members of the LGBTQ community. The Mississippi legislature had received word from the God in whom they believe, that members of the LGBTQ community displeased Him notwithstanding the fact that He had participated in their creation. In order to know what their God thought, it was, of course, necessary for His thoughts to be filtered through the minds of His is self-appointed spokespersons in the Mississippi legislature who were responsible for passing the legislation in question. Those who objected to the law thought that for Mississippi legislators to be considered the vessels into which God would pour anti-LBGTQ venom, was highly suspicious, if not completely incredible. The Supreme Court was not so troubled. It declined to delve into the complex question presented, and permitted the law to stand.
A few days later it was Karen Spence, the wife of the vice-president, who was in the news. She, it turned out, was another vessel into which it seemed, God had poured anti-LBGTQ venom. She had taken a job at a school that does not simply refuse to hire members of the LBGTQ community in any capacity, but refuses to accept children if they participate in or condone homosexual activity. Among its many tenets, as described in the Parent Agreement that all parents sign, is a denial of the theory of evolution, a denial to which the actions of the school would lend credence. Employees are required to sign an employment agreement that, among other things, says the employee will not do anything that violates the “unique roles of male and female.”
Karen’s husband, Mike, was outraged that anyone was offended that his wife had gone to work at that well spring of intolerance. The vice-president said that attacking “Christian education, is deeply offensive to us.” Some might respond that a school that espouses intolerance towards those who do not subscribe to what it thinks its God wants, is offensive to the rest of us.
The final episode occurred on January 22, 2019. The good news was that the bad news imparted to the country on that day, had nothing to do with anyone pretending to be the vessel through which God made His wishes known. It simply had to do with reversing what Trumpsters perceived to be an ill-conceived legacy from the Obama years pertaining to the LGBTQ community. It had to do with military service, something about which the Trump has no first-hand knowledge, due to the debilitating effects of a mischievous heel spur that prevented him from serving in the military.
In 2015, then Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, let it be known that he thought the only reason transgender people should be barred from the military should be an individual’s lack of merit. On August 19, 2015, the Secretary said that regulations banning transgender individuals from the military were being dismantled, and on June 30, 2016, those regulations were repealed. Then came the Trump.
Thirteen months after the regulations were repealed, the Trump said transgender people would no longer be permitted to serve in the military. On August 25, 2017, the Trump ordered the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security to submit an implementation plan by February 21, 2018, that would, among other things, reinstate the ban on transgender individuals serving in the military. Not unexpectedly, suits were brought attacking the Trump’s actions. One trial court that heard a case that arose because of the decision to ban transgender individuals from the military, ruled, among other things, that the reasons the Trump gave for the ban “were not merely unsupported, but were actually contradicted by the studies, conclusions and judgment of the military itself.”
Another case attacking the ban was brought in Washington state and, like its predecessor, the ban was struck down by the trial court. That court observed that the transgender individuals seeking entry into the military were a protected class and laws impairing their rights were subject to strict scrutiny. The government appealed that decision, and on January 22, 2019, the United States Supreme Court reversed the decision of the lower court that had prevented the administration from implementing its ban on permitting transgender individuals to serve in the military. It permitted the ban to go into effect while the matter was litigated in lower courts. Until the lower courts have ruled on the question, and the case once again arrives at the United States Supreme Court, transgender people will not be permitted to serve in the military. Only God knows how He will instruct the members of that Court to rule when the case once again appears before it. Those among my readers who are not in touch with God, however, probably know.