Citizens Reform Center

Reserves of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) which insures bank deposits has hit a 17-year low of $10 billion. This is a result of the wave of bank failures over the last 2 years. Due to financial hardship, many banks are unable to pay new insurance fees to shore up the FDIC. Could this mean that taxes will be the only recourse?

See article here.

Now that the National Arbitration Forum has withdrawn from arbitrating disputes between banks and the public due to a legal action from the Minnesota Attorney General, Bank of America has announced that it will no longer require arbitration as a means to resolve disputes with consumers. The bank acknowledged that they will now have more disputes result in litigation, which could become costly. Consumers who were victimized by the arbitration process have won this battle by making it clear that rulings disproportionately favored the banks.

For more, see the Associated Press article.

Have you read the fine print on a credit card agreements? Have you seen the part saying that disputes could be decided by arbitration? Most would think that this would be an equitable way of resolving differences through an impartial process that would save both sides money, time and effort. Nothing could be further from the truth. To underscore how serious the problems have been, the Obama Administration is proposing an end to arbitration clauses altogether. In actuality, the The National Arbitration Forum (NAF), which has been the arbitrator of choice by the powerful credit card industry has been working in collusion to overwhelmingly overpower the consumer.

Due to the high level of consumer complaints and lawsuits, the Minnesota Attorney General, was forced to take action and sue NAF for “violating state consumer fraud, deceptive trade practices and false advertising laws by hiding financial ties to collection agencies and credit card companies”. With this heat from the AG combined with mounting legal costs, NAF has decided to withdraw from the arbitration business in which it had decided against the public 94% of the time, which has been revealed in a study by Public Citizen. According to a recent AP article by Personal Finance writer Candice Choi, would only list arbitrators who decided in their favor, paying them $400 or more per hour.

This further reveals that the multi-billion dollar debt collection industry has violated laws, not to mention moral standards, that has resulted in the financial ruin of countless Americans who have been victimized due to their lack of knowledge of money, credit, and law.

CRC urges anyone being harassed by debt collectors to learn the principles of money creation, learn their civil rules of procedure, and become part of the movement to create true financial reform.

If you were forced into arbitration with NAF and received a judgment against you, contact us at CRC to vacate the judgment and take part in a class action suit.

For more detail, see this article at Counterpunch.com.

If you were forced into arbitration with NAF and received a judgment against you, contact us at CRC to vacate the judgment and take part in a class action suit.

If you have received a judgment against you from a NAF arbitration, contact us at CRC to pursue vacating the judgment. Call us at 212-631-5886 and leave your information..

It’s truly amazing how many people learn of law suits against them by debt collectors when it’s too late. Their bank account has been frozen due to a default judgment against them! They were never properly notified. It’s called “improper service”. Furthermore, even if they do receive a summons and complaint, if they go to their courthouse to view a copy of the Affidavit of Service, it’s amazing what they find. The Affidavit will say it was delivered to a neighbor or co-tenant with a name the recipient never heard of. In other words, the Affidavit is false.

After a growing volume of complaints, New York’s Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, has taken action. He’s suing 37 of the most notorious law firms. Some of them are large, factory-like operations, that have occupied the court systems with their debt-collection lawyers trained to obtain settlements from a scared public who they know has no knowledge of their rights to demand that rules of court and rules of evidence be adhered to.

This suit could result in vacating 100,000 judgments! Consider this excerpt from the AG’s announcement:

“Carolyn Coffey, an attorney with MFY Legal Services, a nonprofit provider of free legal services in New York, said: “Over and over again we see hundreds of the most vulnerable New Yorkers — the elderly, disabled, and working poor — blindsided by default judgments in lawsuits that they never even knew about until after the cases were over. Our justice system is built on the basic premise that everyone has a right to be heard in court before a judgment can be entered against them, and the debt collection law firms that engage in sewer service deny New Yorkers this fundamental right.”

So if you’ve been sued, first, go to your courthouse and ask for a copy of the Affidavit of Service. If there are inaccuracies, the rules of court allow you to move for dismissal for improper service within 60 days of receipt of the summons. Just ask someone for information on what steps to take.

For the full article, click here.

What’s going on in the “real economy”, the economic reality faced by all but a small percentage of Americans? As a result of job losses causing the highest unemployment level since 1983, millions of people are struggling just to survive week to week. Unemployment payments can only go so far, especially when people have become targets or predatory lenders of mortgage and personal loans as well as credit card companies. After all, our economy is based on debt. The more debt people are in, the more interest and fees the banks collect, and the more the public sinks into a perpetual downward spiral, unable to pay off the principal of our collective debt.

However, it would seem there has to be a breaking point. After years of bombarding the masses with credit offers and misleading them to take on adjustable rate mortgages, otherwise known as subprime, it doesn’t take Einstein to figure out that millions of jobless Americans would get terribly overextended.

Now, the inevitable is occurring. Banks are being forced to write off ever higher levels of bad paper. The nation’s largest lender, Bank of America, is about to report a 10% rise in bad loans totaling $7.6 billion for the 2nd Quarter. The bank expects these figures to increase in coming months. See story here. It should be noted that Bank of America was a recipient of the recent federal bailout program.

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Is there a financial and political breakthrough on the horizon which could open up the floodgates of truth and accountability on our debt-based monetary system?

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) may be about to accomplish mission impossible - getting a majority in Congress to call for an audit of our privately owned, policy dictator of monetary policy - the Federal Reserve. This is the institution which was created in 1913 through secretive actions by a small cabal of power brokers, and given a name that the public would never suspect as being private. With the power to increase and decrease the printing of currency which controls the money supply, along with commercial banks and thrifts that lend money into circulation, our boom/bust oriented economic cycle is at the mercy of this non-governmental organization.

Ron Paul has introduced a bill which has 218 congress members in support. “Since its inception, the Federal Reserve has always operated in the shadows, without sufficient scrutiny or oversight of its operations,” Paul stated.

See full details at Worldnet Daily.

["Points to Ponder" is heard every Monday at 6:45pm EST at www.therealpublicradio.net.]

Hi everyone and welcome to Points to Ponder on TheRealPublicRadio.net. We hope we are sparking thoughts that ignite you into actions. I’m Dianne Ell, your hostess tonight.

The next 15 minutes is sponsored by the Citizens Reform Center also known as CRC.

If you would like more information about our mission of helping people please visit our website www.citizensreformcenter.com.

The last time we talked we went over the concept of what money is by using Glyn Davies’ A History of Money. We talked about how all sorts of things have been used as money at different times in different places. they included tangible items such as gold, silver, beads, eggs, ivory, jade, rice, salt, wampum, and astonishingly in complete contrast to these tangible forms there is a form of money with virtually no tangible properties whatsoever - electronic money.. which has gained rapidly in popularity and is the main form used today.

We found it is almost impossible to define money in terms of its physical form or properties, therefore any definition we gave to money had to rest on its function. Just what did money do? We found we had to look at the abstract and the concrete functions which are: Unit of account, Common measure of value, Standard for deferred payments, Medium of exchange, Means of payment and it’s ability to be stored and still hold value.

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["Points to Ponder" is heard every Monday at 6:45pm EST at www.therealpublicradio.net.]

May 11, 2009

Welcome to points to ponder — sparking thoughts to ignite actions.

I am Dianne Ell, your hostess tonight.

The next 15 minutes is sponsored by the Citizens Reform Center, also known as CRC.

If you would like more information about our mission of helping people, please visit our website.

I hope that you had time this past week to ponder on where and how the banks have kept their secret of creating money openly ….in plain site. Perhaps you got to look at a copy of the book Money & Banking 6th Edition, By David R. Kamerschen or The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s publication, Modern Money Mechanics. And if you weren’t able to actually look at the book hopefully you had a chance to Google them and read some excerpts. As we closed last week I said we would be pondering the deep mysteries of creation….money creation, that is.

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The Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act (for short, the Credit Card Act) was passed on May 22, 2009. Its purpose is to finally reign in the unfettered usurious practices of credit card issuers who have made hundreds of billions of dollars in interest and fees from the public, regardless of the fact that credit is based on book entries rather than actual bank assets according to many official industry sources. After many congressional hearings took place over past years addressing abuses by credit card companies and the absence of consumer protections, finally an initial step has been taken to limit banking practices designed to create debt slaves out the vast majority of people. Strangely, the much-needed reforms won’t take effect for 9 months! This gives the banks plenty of time to gouge the public some more before their practices become illegal. What was Congress thinking? This only gives credence to Sen. Dick Durbin’s admission that “the banks own Congress”.

In any event, here are some of the changes to come:

The credit card act, effective Feb. 22, 2010, won’t slap caps on issuers’ rates and fees. But, it will usher in consumer-friendly changes, such as:

• No more universal default. Except under certain circumstances — for example, if a cardholder is 60 days or more late on a bill — card companies won’t be able to raise rates on existing balances.
• Consumers will get their statements at least 21 days before the due date, instead of 14 days, giving them longer to pay before late fees kick in.
• Issuers can’t charge over-limit fees unless the cardholder agrees to over-limit transactions.
• Annual percentage rates can’t be changed for the first year after a card account is opened, unless the person pays late by 60 days or more.
• Issuers must apply payments to the highest-rate balance first.

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For anyone who has studied the history of central banking, the Federal Reserve, and the constitutional provision on currency, you know of the monolithic power of the global banking elite.

Now Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the 2nd highest ranking Senator, has told it to the world. In his work to pass a bill on banking reform he must have reached his wits end. He actually stated in a radio interview, “And the banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.” Amazing. When someone at the level of Dick Durbin shows frustration over the power of an industry to influence the U.S. government, the cause for concern cannot be understated.

See http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Imagine. Hank Paulson, treasury secretary under G.W. Bush, crafted a plan to solve our current financial crisis by filling bank and brokerage house coffers with over 700 billion with zero accountability and little if any results that have trickled down to the real economy. The job market continues in a downward spiral with unemployment approaching 10%. The number of home foreclosures continues to explode. Gasoline prices continue to rise. Finally, a politician has called attention to the fact that our prestigious Senate is really influenced, no “owned, by the banksters.

Truth can be a breath of fresh air. Better yet, if acted on, it can lead to positive changes. What can make the difference? If all of us learn to loudly protest the control of financial policy that benefits a tiny class of money moguls at the expense of the masses, maybe sanity and an equitable economic model benefiting the majority can be built. What we know for sure is, the current model is designed not to work for the majority. Our job is to learn what will work, educate everyone we know, and notify Congress that we expect them to represent us in the name of progress and prosperity. It’s time for a new era where economic justice for all is as clearly understood as “the land of the free”.