The conservative 3-button suit is ’so OVER’. Its former wearers are now being subpoenaed and their wives are forced to live with less luxuries, boo hoo.
But there isn’t a dire drop in suit purchases, instead men are replacing their banker suits with ‘creative professional’ suits. Gingham shirt, knit tie, trim suit. Stuff no banker in his right mind would be seen in.
Funny how the orange jumpsuit signifying a prison term can affect men’s fashion!
When Dick Durbin pitched his rant on the Senate floor about bankers who “own the place,” he asked his colleagues whether they were going to listen to families facing job loss and bills they can’t pay, or the American Bankers Association.
Credit cards, Regulatory reform, Real Estate brokerage
Tassey & Associates
$30,000
Credit cards
Glover Park Group
$80,000
Credit Cards
The ABA PAC also gave $520,000 in political contributions in 1Q 2009, much of it to members of the House Financial Services and Senate Banking Committee, so it’s little surprise they get to have their say in Committee hearings about what should and shouldn’t be done with regard to credit cards.
Tellingly, when the Credit Card Holders Bill of Rights was passed in the House, it did not contain caps on credit card interest rates.
In March 2008, BofA and other big banks successfully prevented credit card customers from testifying at a hearing on Rep. Carolyn Maloney’s (D-NY) Credit Card Bill of Rights. The banks demanded that customers who had flown from all over the country sign waivers allowing their personal financial information to be revealed to the public before they could testify. They refused.
Those hefty political contributions apparently give banks the right to determine who the Committee will and will not hear from, and under what conditions they can testify.
BofA has received over $50 billion in TARP assistance, and will likely need more, but today they hiked their credit card transaction fees and have doubed the interest rates on many credit cards. As Kevin Drum notes, their justifications for things like retroactive rate hikes really make no sense. But unless there is an unlikely turn of events in the Senate, their right to do so will probably continue unabated.
Hysteria serves no one. We need to be told the full story. As far as I can see, the tragic deaths of 100+ Mexican citizens happened because the ill did not get to medical care until the flu had done too much damage. Two people died in the US, one Mexican boy who was brought to a US hospital and died because the swine flu had done too much damage. The other death was a new mother who had underlying health issues. Tragic. But not a pandemic.
FireDogLake, tongue in cheek, but sadly true says:
The half-dozen remaining white male Supreme Court Justices, comprising possibly only two-thirds of the nine votes on the Court all while drawn from a population that makes up less than a third of the nation. Poor white males, so white, so male, so entrenched in power. How can this cartoonishly over-represented minority group — so dear to the Villagers of the Beltway (85% white males) — be preserved against these imposing statistics?
Total number of Supreme Court Justices in American History:
Imagine the Orwellian nightmare of a non-white woman being brought on board for a lifetime appointment after a history of such overwhelming discrimination against white guys, reducing their historical representation all the way down to 96%.
