That’s mighty swell of them, seeing as how we taxpayers lifted the bank’s greedy ass out of the gutter about a year ago. Of course, the promise came from someone who’s going to be quitting in a few days.
With the White House pressuring bankers to make more loans, Charlotte-based Bank of America Corp. today pledged to increase lending to small- and medium-sized businesses by at least $5 billion next year.Chief executive Ken Lewis made the promise to President Obama at a White House meeting of top U.S. bankers.
Read the rest of this Charlotte Observer article, by Rick Rothacker, here.
You guys been paying attention to the economic forecast news coming out of UNC Charlotte? Here’s a snippet from a recent press release:
“There continue to be very mixed signals concerning the strength of the recovery,” [John] Connaughton said. “The most troubling problem remains the financial sector. Excess reserves, which 16 months ago were less than $2 billion, now stand at nearly $1 trillion. As a result the banking sector, which is critical to recovery, remains troubled. Those enormous reserves represent money that is not being lent out to facilitate the recovery.”Connaughton is a professor of economics in the Belk College of Business at UNC Charlotte. He has served as director of the Economic Forecast since 1981.
This article appears in Dec 15-21, 2009.
You’re forgetting the middlemen, Frank. People were offered fat commissions to push these B.S. loans. Predatory lending was all the rage until the shit hit the fan. You can blame homeowners all you like, and some of them definitely need to own their fair share, but, ultimately, it’s the banks who decided to lend the money to people who didn’t qualify. They could have said no.
What?
The whole thing is really a shell game.
The FDIC insures fractional reserve banking, which is where a bank can lend out much more than it has on deposit.
The federal reserve promotes this and backs it by printing funny money and giving it first to it’s politically connected banks — BofA, Wachovia, Goldman Sachs, Citi. Politicians love the Fed because they fund their social programs, corporate welfare & nation-building without raising taxes. This dilutes the currency in favor of the royalty and against the interests of the peasants (US Taxpayers).
So there’s tons of monopoly money just sloshing around everywhere, no one really knows what is worth what. No one wants to jump the gun.
Eventually the house of cards will collapse and we’ll either have a new funny money currency (The Amero or some N.W.O. currency) or a real commodity based currency. Either way, the US dollar is doomed.
Who knows..I just hope that when it happens it doesnt get violent.