Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Bank of America Gave Away My Money

soraven.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 261 posts

Re: How Bank of America Gave Away My Money

#191

Post by dragonwriter »

pasquinelli wrote: post #189
Arizhel wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just Republicans, it's all the Christians they're in league with, and who vote for them. The philosophy you describe is modern Christian theology. It's called "Prosperity Doctrine", and basically boils down to "God rewards those he loves the most", so rich people are better people than the rest of us because obviously God loves them more and has bestowed gifts of wealth upon them. Go into any American megach…

You are painting Christianity, even just modern American christianity, with a very very broad brush, but there is a connection between prosperity theology and predatory capitalism. But I think it's mostly that prosperity theology is the expression of predatory capitalism in the domain of religion.

> But I think it's mostly that prosperity theology is the expression of predatory capitalism in the domain of religion.

Prosperity theology (in its original form of the Calvinist visible elect) is older than capitalism, so if anything I'd reverse those: capitalism (which is inherently predatory, as noted in the initial critiques in which the system was named) is an expression of prosperity theology in the domain of economics.

Re: How Bank of America Gave Away My Money

#192

Post by gertef »

late2part wrote: post #123
phkahler wrote: post #86

The error was committed by the LASD, their response here is wrong: A few minutes later, she came back with the bad news. “Why didn’t you call earlier? It’s too late for us to withdraw the request. The money was already sent to the court! You need to go down to the courthouse and ask them to show you the court documents.” It is not his problem what they did with the money, they took it from him plain and simple. The e…

Your anecdote about inter-carrier billing is a good one. It reminds me of a position one of my best friends takes on "identity theft." He asserts it simply doesn't exist. What bank's call identity theft most of the world calls "Bank Fraud." The banks don't want to eat it - so they lobby congress to pass laws making it your fault if a bad person tricks the bank. tl;dr: Similar to how banks try to make identity theft y…

"Mitchell & Webb Sound - Identity Theft" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E

Re: How Bank of America Gave Away My Money

#193

Post by jandrewrogers »

I will never use Bank of America again, for similar reason.

On two separate occasions they "lost" transfers to the IRS (totaling $40k) that I only discovered when the IRS came after me for failure to pay taxes. I had full receipts from BofA for the transfers that apparently never happened. At least as disconcerting, the reaction of BofA to the situation both times suggested that sending money to /dev/null was a routine occurrence in their organization.

Re: How Bank of America Gave Away My Money

#194

Post by code4tee »

Wow. Lots of parties liable here. Reeks of those cases where banks forceclosed on the wrong houses.

Sad that one has to go public like this to get anything to happen, but I suspect that it will help showing the world how incompetent the involved parties were.

I remember there being some brilliant story in the reverse direction where someone sued a bank (I believe it was BoA) for something like this and won. When the bank didn't respond they got the court to allow property seizure to recover damages. Guy rocked up at a local bank branch and started taking computers and such with court order in hand and sheriff watching. He was legally robbing the bank. Bank reacted quite quickly then!

Re: How Bank of America Gave Away My Money

#195

Post by jumpkickhit »

nathantotten wrote: post #75

Wells Fargo did this to me many years ago from a business account. The State of California issued a seizer for unpaid taxes for another business. In the end I think Wells Fargo told us that our tax ID numbers were similar. We did end up getting the money back from the state of California after about 3 years. We of course never got back the penalties Wells Fargo charged or interest.

Wells Fargo did similar to me too. However, they then deleted all of my account history (I was paperless) and demanded I call their corporate office, refusing to do anything in writing.

Glad you were able to resolve things, I wasn't able to.

Re: How Bank of America Gave Away My Money

#196

Post by wl »

metaphorm wrote: post #149
Arizhel wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just Republicans, it's all the Christians they're in league with, and who vote for them. The philosophy you describe is modern Christian theology. It's called "Prosperity Doctrine", and basically boils down to "God rewards those he loves the most", so rich people are better people than the rest of us because obviously God loves them more and has bestowed gifts of wealth upon them. Go into any American megach…

you should edit your post to more specifically say "certain popular sects of Evangelical Southern Baptist Protestant Christians" instead of just "Christians".

That would still be wrong. Prosperity theology is not particular to Southern Baptists and my experience is that most SBC churches oppose it. The most prominent manifestation would be the Word of Faith movement in charismatic circles.

Re: How Bank of America Gave Away My Money

#197

Post by jumpkickhit »

ryandrake wrote: post #108
gtsteve wrote: post #46

I don't understand why he's taking this on himself to be honest. If I was incorrectly named in some sort of lawsuit, my first reaction would be to call my lawyer. Who knows if there's also an incorrect arrest warrant out for example?

Most people don't have lawyers to call. The last 1/3 of his story was about him calling lawyers trying to find one who would talk to him. If someone told me to call my lawyer I wouldn't know what to do. I don't have a lawyer. I don't know people who "have lawyers" or can recommend one. I met a lawyer once, I think, when I bought my previous house. I'd probably search online for "Lawyers in San Francisco" and pick one…

In the article, the amount taken was $3,400.

A lawyer to fight this costs a lot more than that. Also, there's another issue. What if that was his entire savings? Now he has $0 for a lawyer.

Re: How Bank of America Gave Away My Money

#198

Post by dragonwriter »

thebooktocome wrote: post #153
rrauenza wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty wide brush you're painting with, there. There isn't just "one" modern Christian theology.

Name a modern American denomination that rejects prosperity theology.

The single largest Christian denomination in the US, Catholicism, rejects it; it seems that some of the larger Protestant groups do, too, including the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, the two largest denominations in the Lutheran tradition.

The modern "prosperity Gospel" or "word-faith" movement is basically a televangelist/megachurch phenomenon, though "prosperity theology" can more broadly encompass things like the classical Calvinist doctrine of the visible elect. Even in its broadest interpretation, though, prosperity theology has always been a minority view in Christianity, even American Christianity.

Re: How Bank of America Gave Away My Money

#199

Post by dragonwriter »

thebooktocome wrote: post #166
Cacti wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all? Catholicism, Evangelical in general, Pentecostal, Lutheran, Baptist, etc. It's most assuredly not remotely mainstream. Note that the megachurches you're referring to are in most cases not part of a branch of Christianity but stand alone.

Okay, Catholicism. Fair enough. But I think you're wrong about every other denomination on your list. I've been to enough Baptist and Lutheran churches to feel justified in disagreement. The Presbyterians (including our president) feel much the same way. The simple fact is that God's blessing = economic prosperity is practically biblical. "May his tribe increase" and all that. Also I'm not OP and did not refer to meg…

> I've been to enough Baptist and Lutheran churches to feel justified in disagreement.

The largest Baptist (Southern Baptist Convention) and Lutheran (both ELCA and Missouri Synod) denominations absolutely reject it. Baptist and Lutheran are broad traditions, not unitary denominations, and there are certainly minor groups that identify with those traditions that preach either the particular beliefs of the modern "prosperity gospel" or other things that fit within the broader ambit of prosperity theology.

> The Presbyterians (including our president) feel much the same way.

Presbyterianism is a branch of Calvinism, and it's unsurprising that the Calvinist doctrine of the visible elect would be more influential there than in other branches of Protestantism (or non-Protestant Christianity.)

Post reply on HN