Wall Street continues to ignore America’s anger at it, sipping champagne from rooftops while protesters march below.
By Travis Waldron, ThinkProgress
Posted on November 20, 2011
Wall Street banks, largely spared from the economic ruin felt by
millions of Americans since the financial crisis of 2008, have returned
to profitability, generating
higher profits in
the two-and-a-half years since the crisis than they did in nearly eight
years preceding it. But that hasn’t stopped them from seeking new ways
to generate revenue — like Bank of America’s proposed $5-a-month debit
card fee or the millions banks have made from charging consumers to
receive unemployment benefits or food stamps.
If all this makes Americans feel like Wall Street banks only view
them as money-making tools, well, that’s because the banks apparently
do. According to David Mooney, a former JPMorgan Chase employee, Wall
Street banks see consumers as an “income stream” to
exploit for profit-making purposes, Reuters reports:
David Mooney, chief executive officer of Alliant Credit Union in
Chicago, one of the nation’s larger credit unions, used to work at a one
of Wall Street’s top banks, JPMorgan Chase. There’s a vast cultural gap
between Wall Street and his new world, he says: Old friends from the
Street, he says, now jokingly refer to him as a “socialist.” A credit
union is supposed to be run in the interests of all members, he says,
while commercial bankers tend to see consumers as customers who can be “exploited” by layering on more fees.
Says Mooney: “I
don’t say this lightly, but the consumer is simply an income stream and
exploiting that is the purpose of the banking organization.”
Mooney’s bluntness may seem shocking, but his assessment shouldn’t. Wall Street banks made millions profiting off
shoddy mortgage lending practices,
setting the stage for the housing collapse that plunged millions of
Americans into foreclosure. They made a mess of the foreclosure
process,
using robo-signers to speed
foreclosures and foreclosing on homes they either
didn’t own or that
weren’t even in foreclosure.
They sold deals to investors that they knew would fail, and took
advantage of customers with outrageous overdraft, credit card, and other
fees.
In the aftermath of the financial crisis and the horrors it exposed, Wall Street banks
spent millions to
prevent the passage of financial regulatory reform. Once the
Dodd-Frank
Wall Street Reform Act passed, they spent just as much trying to shape
its rules. They opposed the formation of a
Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau (CFPB), the agency tasked with protecting consumers from
predatory banking practices, and in concert with their Republican
friends in Congress, have fought to shape who will lead the bureau and
how it will work.
Unfortunately for Wall Street, it didn’t take blunt assessments like
Mooney’s for Americans to take action. In October, 650,000 Americans
joined credit unions, which, as Mooney noted, are “supposed to be run in the interests of all members.”
40,000more joined them on Bank Transfer Day earlier this month.
Wall Street, meanwhile, continues to
ignore America’s anger at it, sipping champagne from rooftops while protesters march below.
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