Exactly How The Poor Get Poorer, and The Rich Get Richer. Banks Are Not Your Friends!
Joseph Raglione
August 26, 2010
Gentle readers of this American Chronicle, when living in poverty, daily survival becomes a miserable struggle for millions of people, and that includes myself!
I barely survive economically but being a man contented with very little, the fact that I am poor did not register solidly in my head, until I tried to borrow money from a brand new Bank that just opened up down the street. The Toronto Dominion Bank, or T.D.Trust.
Living in Quebec, I have been kept in a socially protected Bubble by our co-operative Desjardins Bank, which is more or less a member operated Bank. I forgot what would happen if I dared attempt to borrow from anybody else! Here was my reminder...>
The Toronto Dominion Debacle! Or, how to insult a World journalist!
"Banking was never this comfortable" claimed the often repeated advertising on Television last Winter, and continues today, and so when they created a brand new Toronto Dominion Bank, a few feet from my home in Laval West, Quebec, I and my friends and family waited to see just how comfortable it was going to be? A week after the opening day fanfare subsided, I was invited to sit on a big Red Sofa seat with a cup of Coffee while waiting for an employee to sign me in as a new TD Bank customer. It was exactly like the commercial advertising! Wow! What a wonderful NEW BANK! I thought to myself!
After being interviewed by a charming and pretty young lady, I opened a T.D. account and I thought, maybe I will transfer my pension and my account from the Desjardins group to this comfortable and brand new friendly bank. This bank is after all, closer to my home!
To transfer my account I first needed to clear my debt from the Desjardins group. Desjardins is an organization my family and I have trusted and used for decades; it was
a co-op Bank when it opened, and Laval citizens paid a Five Dollar membership fee to join. We all felt we owned a part of Desjardins; but I was beginning to feel the Desjardins group had grown too large and impersonal. It is now an international Bank with profits in the Billions. To be fair, they did lend me money last year to renovate my rental apartment. I needed to borrow money from people I felt I could trust and who would trust and respect me, even though I am getting along in years and I am forced, because of a disability, to survive on a small Pension. I am poor but proud and I try to maintain a positive attitude!
The television advertising portrays two old gentlemen being welcomed by the T.D. Bank. As I am over Sixty myself, I took a chance that I would be welcomed and I asked for a loan of Twelve Thousand Dollars, at Six percent. It would be enough to pay off my debt with Desjardins, and I would have less interest to pay. I would then transfer my account to the T.D. and have fewer steps to walk in the Winter. That was when my small dream Bubble burst!
Based on my income, I was quickly and politely refused! My Sixteen thousand Dollars a year was not enough for T.D. to lend me money, even though I owned a house and my debts were minimal. I did mention to the T.D. manager that I was a non-profit writer who wrote for the Democratic Party of the United States, but to them that was irrelevent, and more probably they did not believe me!
I now have a new account at the T.D. Trust Bank, in Laval West, Quebec, but I don't TRUST THEM AT ALL! Through clever advertising, they managed to gain control for a few weeks of Two Hundred of my Dollars. Not much you may remark, but join that together with hundreds and possibly thousands of other Bank depositors, and you have a floating economic base from which the T.D. Bank will lend money, at high interest, to the middle and upper middle class of my Province. In other words, they take from the poor and lend to the rich, and when under a certain basic income revenue, their lending policy excludes pensioners and welfare recipients and on average, anybody who brings in less than thirty-five thousand dollars a year. That made me think. How many Banks create a floating economic foundation using the bank accounts of people to whom they will never lend money? My brain started to over-heat!
Pensioners and welfare recipients and basic income people, who never have enough in the Bank to be able to claim a loan; continue however to use Bank credit cards at high-interest! The reason that is possible is simple. If you own a house without a mortgage, the high interest credit cards arrive free in the mail box. But who knows you own a house without a mortgage? Why the Banks of course!
The average middle-class person who most often needs a loan for basic surival, is forced to survive on high-interest Bank credit cards, and loans that on average never exceed Five thousand Dollars. For the Toronto Dominion Bank, you need a Thirty Five Thousand Dollar and up income to ask for a loan. Below that, you can sit in the comfortable Sofa chairs for a while before the bank closes!
If you have a mortgage free asset, like a House, the Bank will quickly lend you money. Your house is worth more than the loan and if you default on the loan, the Bank won't hesitate to grab your property. And if for some reason, like an accident or health problems, you default on the loan, your Toast!
Here is the rub! High interest rates will force many middle class people to work like slaves simply to meet the basic minimum payments on a Bank Loan. Many people on fixed incomes, who use Bank credit cards, pay exhorbitant interest rates! Those who do manage to borrow from a Bank to pay Taxes, or Doctors, or Car loans, often give up the struggle and sell out, or are forced out! They leave houses they created from the ground up and where they raised children; but where they are no longer welcome to remain because a gentrification process has begun where: Banks, real estate developers and basic land grabbers want to move in, buy low and then they renovate, developing or flipping the properties for profit.
Big Banks, when they sense high profits, can help create the gentrification process. They know exactly who are the poor within any community. Anybody who opens a Bank account surrenders that information immediately to a Bank manager. A manager knows exactly who owns a property, but who also has low income. Land and home owners in any given neighborhood, with minimum pension income, are targets; and if Banks are not regulated and socially responsible, society becomes unstable. The profit motive becomes the only reason Banks exist. Injustice and corruption become pandemic within the economic system and Banks who become too big to fail, do more than just fail, they fail everybody in the country!
People who have spent a lifetime building Homes and raising families, are forced out when they are most vulnerable! Many poor and lower middle class, as well as elderly people, are being slowly forced off their properties to make room for wealthier profit oriented individuals. Where social and environmental protections are lacking, industrialization becomes rampant! Local Taxes increase to pay for the extra water mains and sewage pipes required to service new buildings, like new T.D. Bank buildings.
Fixed income people, who can't pay the extra City Taxes, are forced off their properties.
Where the poor and the sick and elderly end up, is a good question? I'm not leaving my property any time soon, even if it means I eat Beans on a regular basis!
Profit appears to be the only motive for many Banks like T.D., and I am going to print out this message and bring it to my local newspaper friends, because while yes I am poor, I am also a journalist and a social science writer who continues to LOOK AFTER HIS PEERS IN THE PROVINCE OF QUEBEC...AS WELL AS A GREAT MANY OUTSIDE OF CANADA! It is apparent that the Ontario T.D. Bank policy will not help the poor of Quebec. All last winter these characters advertised comfortable seats, friendly business smiles and a cup of coffee, while their only intention was to infiltrate Quebec and swipe business away from our socially friendly co-operative Banks, like Desjardins. Banks like the T.D. Ontario Trust want to grab as much money as possible from the few middle and upper middle class people we have in this Province, while using lower income people for an economic base and denying them loans based on their revenue.
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, in the meantime, in between time, plant a Garden and create a Co-Op Bank of friends and neighbors. That was how Desjardins started.
P.S. Update! Apparently I hit a nerve because the new T.D. Bank has sent me a letter forcibly closing my account as of 10/18/2010/, and sent me a letter to that effect.
P.P.S. I don't dislike Co-Op and people friendly Banks who will lend you a reasonable amount of money, at low interest, and fully disclose the steps needed to quickly repay both the loan and the interest without greatly disturbing your survival budget. Banks willing to help you every step of the way!
Signed Joseph Raglione
Executive Director The World Humanitarian Peace and Ecology Movement.
From: "human4us"
I barely survive economically but being a man contented with very little, the fact that I am poor did not register solidly in my head, until I tried to borrow money from a brand new Bank that just opened up down the street. The Toronto Dominion Bank, or T.D.Trust.
Living in Quebec, I have been kept in a socially protected Bubble by our co-operative Desjardins Bank, which is more or less a member operated Bank. I forgot what would happen if I dared attempt to borrow from anybody else! Here was my reminder...>
The Toronto Dominion Debacle! Or, how to insult a World journalist!
"Banking was never this comfortable" claimed the often repeated advertising on Television last Winter, and continues today, and so when they created a brand new Toronto Dominion Bank, a few feet from my home in Laval West, Quebec, I and my friends and family waited to see just how comfortable it was going to be? A week after the opening day fanfare subsided, I was invited to sit on a big Red Sofa seat with a cup of Coffee while waiting for an employee to sign me in as a new TD Bank customer. It was exactly like the commercial advertising! Wow! What a wonderful NEW BANK! I thought to myself!
After being interviewed by a charming and pretty young lady, I opened a T.D. account and I thought, maybe I will transfer my pension and my account from the Desjardins group to this comfortable and brand new friendly bank. This bank is after all, closer to my home!
To transfer my account I first needed to clear my debt from the Desjardins group. Desjardins is an organization my family and I have trusted and used for decades; it was
a co-op Bank when it opened, and Laval citizens paid a Five Dollar membership fee to join. We all felt we owned a part of Desjardins; but I was beginning to feel the Desjardins group had grown too large and impersonal. It is now an international Bank with profits in the Billions. To be fair, they did lend me money last year to renovate my rental apartment. I needed to borrow money from people I felt I could trust and who would trust and respect me, even though I am getting along in years and I am forced, because of a disability, to survive on a small Pension. I am poor but proud and I try to maintain a positive attitude!
The television advertising portrays two old gentlemen being welcomed by the T.D. Bank. As I am over Sixty myself, I took a chance that I would be welcomed and I asked for a loan of Twelve Thousand Dollars, at Six percent. It would be enough to pay off my debt with Desjardins, and I would have less interest to pay. I would then transfer my account to the T.D. and have fewer steps to walk in the Winter. That was when my small dream Bubble burst!
Based on my income, I was quickly and politely refused! My Sixteen thousand Dollars a year was not enough for T.D. to lend me money, even though I owned a house and my debts were minimal. I did mention to the T.D. manager that I was a non-profit writer who wrote for the Democratic Party of the United States, but to them that was irrelevent, and more probably they did not believe me!
I now have a new account at the T.D. Trust Bank, in Laval West, Quebec, but I don't TRUST THEM AT ALL! Through clever advertising, they managed to gain control for a few weeks of Two Hundred of my Dollars. Not much you may remark, but join that together with hundreds and possibly thousands of other Bank depositors, and you have a floating economic base from which the T.D. Bank will lend money, at high interest, to the middle and upper middle class of my Province. In other words, they take from the poor and lend to the rich, and when under a certain basic income revenue, their lending policy excludes pensioners and welfare recipients and on average, anybody who brings in less than thirty-five thousand dollars a year. That made me think. How many Banks create a floating economic foundation using the bank accounts of people to whom they will never lend money? My brain started to over-heat!
Pensioners and welfare recipients and basic income people, who never have enough in the Bank to be able to claim a loan; continue however to use Bank credit cards at high-interest! The reason that is possible is simple. If you own a house without a mortgage, the high interest credit cards arrive free in the mail box. But who knows you own a house without a mortgage? Why the Banks of course!
The average middle-class person who most often needs a loan for basic surival, is forced to survive on high-interest Bank credit cards, and loans that on average never exceed Five thousand Dollars. For the Toronto Dominion Bank, you need a Thirty Five Thousand Dollar and up income to ask for a loan. Below that, you can sit in the comfortable Sofa chairs for a while before the bank closes!
If you have a mortgage free asset, like a House, the Bank will quickly lend you money. Your house is worth more than the loan and if you default on the loan, the Bank won't hesitate to grab your property. And if for some reason, like an accident or health problems, you default on the loan, your Toast!
Here is the rub! High interest rates will force many middle class people to work like slaves simply to meet the basic minimum payments on a Bank Loan. Many people on fixed incomes, who use Bank credit cards, pay exhorbitant interest rates! Those who do manage to borrow from a Bank to pay Taxes, or Doctors, or Car loans, often give up the struggle and sell out, or are forced out! They leave houses they created from the ground up and where they raised children; but where they are no longer welcome to remain because a gentrification process has begun where: Banks, real estate developers and basic land grabbers want to move in, buy low and then they renovate, developing or flipping the properties for profit.
Big Banks, when they sense high profits, can help create the gentrification process. They know exactly who are the poor within any community. Anybody who opens a Bank account surrenders that information immediately to a Bank manager. A manager knows exactly who owns a property, but who also has low income. Land and home owners in any given neighborhood, with minimum pension income, are targets; and if Banks are not regulated and socially responsible, society becomes unstable. The profit motive becomes the only reason Banks exist. Injustice and corruption become pandemic within the economic system and Banks who become too big to fail, do more than just fail, they fail everybody in the country!
People who have spent a lifetime building Homes and raising families, are forced out when they are most vulnerable! Many poor and lower middle class, as well as elderly people, are being slowly forced off their properties to make room for wealthier profit oriented individuals. Where social and environmental protections are lacking, industrialization becomes rampant! Local Taxes increase to pay for the extra water mains and sewage pipes required to service new buildings, like new T.D. Bank buildings.
Fixed income people, who can't pay the extra City Taxes, are forced off their properties.
Where the poor and the sick and elderly end up, is a good question? I'm not leaving my property any time soon, even if it means I eat Beans on a regular basis!
Profit appears to be the only motive for many Banks like T.D., and I am going to print out this message and bring it to my local newspaper friends, because while yes I am poor, I am also a journalist and a social science writer who continues to LOOK AFTER HIS PEERS IN THE PROVINCE OF QUEBEC...AS WELL AS A GREAT MANY OUTSIDE OF CANADA! It is apparent that the Ontario T.D. Bank policy will not help the poor of Quebec. All last winter these characters advertised comfortable seats, friendly business smiles and a cup of coffee, while their only intention was to infiltrate Quebec and swipe business away from our socially friendly co-operative Banks, like Desjardins. Banks like the T.D. Ontario Trust want to grab as much money as possible from the few middle and upper middle class people we have in this Province, while using lower income people for an economic base and denying them loans based on their revenue.
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, in the meantime, in between time, plant a Garden and create a Co-Op Bank of friends and neighbors. That was how Desjardins started.
P.S. Update! Apparently I hit a nerve because the new T.D. Bank has sent me a letter forcibly closing my account as of 10/18/2010/, and sent me a letter to that effect.
P.P.S. I don't dislike Co-Op and people friendly Banks who will lend you a reasonable amount of money, at low interest, and fully disclose the steps needed to quickly repay both the loan and the interest without greatly disturbing your survival budget. Banks willing to help you every step of the way!
Signed Joseph Raglione
Executive Director The World Humanitarian Peace and Ecology Movement.
From: "human4us"
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