Monday
Jan032011
A Grassroots Movement Against Usury: Ten Percent (10%) Is Enough - Video
Thanks to the producers of this short film for sending it our way.
A 10% cap on credit card and other interest rates...
This report shows that banks made $39 billion in overdraft fees in 2009. That is an all-time record. Let that sink in. You bailed them out and they respond by hiking fees.
Thirty-nine billion.
"It could be the most exciting social movement to come out of the financial crisis: a movement to cap interest rates at 10%. This video captures the birth of the movement -- on July 22nd, when simultaneous rallies in five U.S. cities and London put the biggest banks on notice."
10 minute version...
Jan 3, 2011 at 5:30 PM
Reader Comments (14)
Think about it...if capital can earn 20% in the debt business, not enough capital will go to manufacturing and other areas where a 20% return is harder to find.
I would have no problem with a cap of 5% above the prime rate, whereever it might be at any given time.
Prime PLUS 5 might be a movement that could gain traction. A flat 10% cap won't go anywhere on Capitol Hill.
The US had laws regarding usury until the Supreme Court decision a couple of decades ago. Was it a problem back then? It's debatable that people on the bottom need payday loans and check cashing services as much as they need the banking system we had 25 years ago.
It is said that you can measure the degradation of society by the number of payday loan places and pawn shops in a community. I am sure everyone see's them increasing in numbers.
@ AB
Your second post was impressively written.
@ PaxAmerican
Payday loans and check cashing services are primarily in business to cash welfare checks and can charge up to 25% for that service, since people on welfare can't have bank accounts.
They also do the payday loans preying on those who earn less in society at rates that once upon a time would have been called loan sharking.
It is bad enough that the taxpayer foots the bill for welfare programs, but to see these check cashing places operate in this fashion amounts to exploitation at the taxpayers expense.
The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.
Noam Chomsky
Civilization can only revive when there shall come into being in a number of individuals a new tone of mind, independent of the prevalent one among the crowds, and in opposition to it -- a tone of mind which will gradually win influence over the collective one, and in the end determine its character. Only an ethical movement can rescue us from barbarism, and the ethical comes into existence only in individuals.
Albert Schweitzer
Aristotle in 350 B.C.:
The most hated sort of money-making, and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself and not from the natural use of it-for money was intended merely for exchange, not for increase at interest. And this term interest, which implies the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money, because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of money-making, this is the most unnatural.
Saint Thomas Aquinas:
He who takes usury for a loan of money acts unjustly for he sells what does not exist. It is wrong in itself to take a price (usury) for the use of money lent, and as in the case of other offences against justice, one is bound to make restitution of his unjustly acquired money.
Thomas Jefferson:
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a money aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power (of money) should be taken from the banks, and restored to the people to whom it belongs.
Abraham Lincoln:
The money power preys upon the nation in times of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes.
Henry Ford:
The function of money is not to make money but to move goods. Money is only one part of our transportation system. It moves goods from man to man. A dollar bill is like a postage stamp: it is no good unless it will move commodities between persons. If a postage stamp will not carry a letter, or money will not move goods, it is just the same as an engine that will not run. Someone will have to get out and fix it.
Also Henry Ford (and my favorite):
It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.