Latefee Avoidance

$ Trillion Gift of the Public's Money by the Nation's Politicians to the World's Financial Corporations

Surprisingly, corruption in government has totally disproportionate consequences. For a few dollars of corrupt payoffs, through campaign contributions or direct bribes (if you or the candidate can actually tell the difference), the benefit to the campaign contributor is often in the order of $100,000 to $1 or even $1 million to $1. Congress has refused to amend the National Bank Act of 1864 which by regulatory agency rule (and subsequent court decisions) has taken away (preempted) the jurisdiction of state legislators and state courts to apply state usury laws against banks, credit card companies and other financial companies regulated by federal agencies such as the Controller of the Currency.

Thus, the amount of interest charged, the amount of late fees charged,and the amount of cash-advance transactional fees charged by federally-regulated financial institutions and credit card companies were no longer subject to state usury laws, but to the far less restrictive federal law. As a result, these protected financial institutions have increased their late fees, interest rates, cash-advance transactional fees and various other charges assessed against consumers.

The result is that these charges now equal all other earnings of these institutions, or equal about 50% of all income of these financial institutions. The nation's federally-regulated financial institutions have a capital value of many trillions of dollars, and perhaps 50% or more of that capital value is attributable to these outrageous charges. In fact, because the charges are made without the providing of any services, the charges have a much higher markup and value, which means that their value may be significantly more than 50% of the capital value of these institutions.

Accordingly, Congress and the President have stolen hundreds of billions (perhaps trillions) of dollars from the pockets of the voting public and handed this money over to the nation's financial institutions in exchange for a paltry few million dollars in campaign funds. The ratio seems to be somewhere between 100,000 to 1 and 1 million to 1 (i.e., for every $100,000 to $1,000,000 of your money, the corrupt politicans have raked in a single dollar of campaign contributions or bribes). 

I never could understand how our nation's politicians are able to sell the country out for so little. Not only is Congress guilty of inaction, it is also guilty of passing a recent statute preventing consumers from scheduling (i.e., wiping out) credit card debt in personal bankruptcy proceedings.