Banks: The Leech on the American Pocket

"WOMAN BOYCOTTS BANK OF AMERICA, WINS". What a headline and a wake-up call. Hopefully, the actions by this angry and frustrated woman will trigger a wider boycott of banks that employ these practices. These banks beg for billions from the government, use part of those funds swallow up one another and consolidate to produce greater profit on the backs of the middle-class by committing usury. They are loan sharks pure and simple.

Banks are predators that obviously have not learned over the decades from their own disasters. Of course it is not all their fault. State governments from 1945 to 1979 had set or "capped" the maximum interest rate at 36%.

Do not think that this was the work of one political party. BOTH parties crawl to the bank trough and allowed these things to continue.

The Supreme Court in 1978 ruled allowing national banks to "export" their interest rates on consumer loans which include credit cards, to be applied to any person in any state who holds that card. As a result since South Dakota had no usury laws, banks could setup their office in South Dakota and transfer their no limit interest rates to any of their card holders anywhere in the country.

Since the national banks make their home state in South Dakota, by law they can charge unlimited rates since South Dakota has no limit. Both parties of Congress are going to have exercise some backbone, stop drooling over bank donations and enact a law that positively prevents banks from these actions. Loopholes of some form always seem to be created for these people and others to use the general public as some old piggy bank to squeeze money.

State law was automatically preempted by that Supreme Court ruling of 1978 and is the reason the condition people find themselves in today. In addition there is the disappointing fact that too many people won't discipline themselves off excessive use of credit cards.

We cannot put all the blame of Congress and the banks. People need to learn to say "NO" to their kids and will not stop obsessing over having to have the latest "things". Why do parents feel they must spend so much and go into such debt on their kids for things they do not need? It is to relieve their own guilt over saying no when the child gets upset.

How people do you know max out their credit cards for Christmas or, on that vacation they can't afford and spent the next year at least trying to pay it off?

Greed works both ways. The banks love you! How greedy can you afford to be?