Wells Fargo Hit with $1B in Fines • Hacker News Board

Re: Wells Fargo Hit with $1B in Fines

#391

Post by collinmanderson » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 1:28 PM UTC

p-funk wrote: post #81

heurist wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely an industry ripe for rebirth. For instance, I should be able to partition my money into several lightweight accounts - one for groceries, one for home expenses, investment, etc - and automatically have fractions of my deposits sent to those accounts so my budgeting and money management are handled without any effort on my part. I should have lightweight cards available for each of those accounts with…

I've been planning a side project with a lot of those features. That's exactly how I think about my budgeting and that's exactly how I would like to allocate my money. I'm really not aware of any way to do this currently, apart from a lot of manual work in a spreadsheet, which is annoying and still requires restraint in spending. Mint isn't even that helpful when it comes to budgeting because their alerts and categor…

> export Mint's data as a csv, and then build an app around that

This is what I do. Mint doesn't have an API, but I just inject some javascript using the console that pulls the csv file and displays the data in a way that makes sense to me.

Re: Wells Fargo Hit with $1B in Fines

#392

Post by andrepd » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 1:34 PM UTC

chiefalchemist wrote: post #363

kaizendad wrote: post #19

OK, but Wells Fargo made $5 billion last year, and the activity they were fined for took place over many years, which leaves me to ask: after the fines, was this activity profitable or not? If it was profitable, do the fines actually dissuade future dishonesty? Also, apparently Wells Fargo thinks that 27,000 people lost their cars over this. I bet none of those people will be made whole. Cars are really essential thi…

Will fines dissuade future dishonesty? Not likely. But jail time of the guilty decision makers would. Steal a candy bar? Go to jail. Knowingly ruin someone's life? No problem. The shareholders pay for it.

That will never happen because the lawmakers (i.e. wealthy elite, not democratically elected representatives) will never write laws to punish themselves. As long we live in a plutocracy we have zero hope of personal accountability for these sort of criminals.

They will however pass brutal laws sentencing poor people to 35 years to life for possession, an other disgusting shit like that, but that's another story.

Re: Wells Fargo Hit with $1B in Fines

#393

Post by andrepd » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 1:38 PM UTC

keganunderwood wrote: post #388

rbanffy wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were the decision makers involved adequately punished? Will they ever do something like it again? Fines dissuade from making exactly the same thing but that doesn't seem to prevent different kinds of scam.

ZTE apparently paid bonuses to 30+ people even though that were involved in some kind of violation. I bet Wells Fargo well also pay the CEO and the board very handsomely.

As it was in 2009 where me and you and every John Q Taxpayer contributed to the yacht and private jet fund for the Wall Street execs that stole pension money from millions of Americans, tripled unemployment, caused hundreds of thousands of excess deaths in the subsequent economic downturn...

Nothing pitchforks, molotovs, and sturdy rope wouldn't solve, but I guess we're just too comfortable to do anything but passively let them f*ck us in the butt.

Re: Wells Fargo Hit with $1B in Fines

#394

Post by chiefalchemist » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 2:02 PM UTC

avaika wrote: post #383

chiefalchemist wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will fines dissuade future dishonesty? Not likely. But jail time of the guilty decision makers would. Steal a candy bar? Go to jail. Knowingly ruin someone's life? No problem. The shareholders pay for it.

Why massively put people in jail for everything? In most countries jails are no good to prisoners. They are used to isolate people from society, not to help people to become a better person. And society is putting tones of money to support penitentiary system. I believe for economical crimes people who took the decision should be fined a lot and banned from taking positions where they can do the same things again. No…

Massively? How many C Level execs are there?

Re: Wells Fargo Hit with $1B in Fines

#395

Post by chiefalchemist » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 2:09 PM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #392

chiefalchemist wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will fines dissuade future dishonesty? Not likely. But jail time of the guilty decision makers would. Steal a candy bar? Go to jail. Knowingly ruin someone's life? No problem. The shareholders pay for it.

That will never happen because the lawmakers (i.e. wealthy elite, not democratically elected representatives) will never write laws to punish themselves. As long we live in a plutocracy we have zero hope of personal accountability for these sort of criminals. They will however pass brutal laws sentencing poor people to 35 years to life for possession, an other disgusting shit like that, but that's another story.

Yes. Agreed.

Look at 2007 / 2008. Wall Street nearly crash the world economy to the ground. Ecnomists estimated it cause deaths into the thousands. (30k or 300k come to mind but I can't find the reference atm.) The Obama admin for all intents and purposes pardoned Wall Street. Yet Obama is hailed as a liberal, a hero, and one of our greatest ever.

I have to believe Orwell is bewildered.

Re: Wells Fargo Hit with $1B in Fines

#396

Post by chiefalchemist » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 2:11 PM UTC

freddie_mercury wrote: post #364

chiefalchemist wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will fines dissuade future dishonesty? Not likely. But jail time of the guilty decision makers would. Steal a candy bar? Go to jail. Knowingly ruin someone's life? No problem. The shareholders pay for it.

Actually there is a lot of real world evidence that fines dissuade honesty.

The Wells Fargo fine indicates there are gaps in that evidence ;)

Re: Wells Fargo Hit with $1B in Fines

#397

Post by dumbfounder » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 2:12 PM UTC

s73v3r_ wrote: post #316

djschnei wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I just don't care enough to ruin my life over it. It's a pretty interesting thing to think about, actually. To think that a bloody revolution was sparked over much less than what we put up with today... It's almost like Stockholm Syndrome.

That revolution was fought because there was no representation in the body that levied the taxes. We do have representation in the body that levies taxes now.

Tell that to the people of Washington DC! (No voting congresspeople)

Re: Wells Fargo Hit with $1B in Fines

#398

Post by BeetleB » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 2:45 PM UTC

freddie_mercury wrote: post #364

chiefalchemist wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will fines dissuade future dishonesty? Not likely. But jail time of the guilty decision makers would. Steal a candy bar? Go to jail. Knowingly ruin someone's life? No problem. The shareholders pay for it.

Actually there is a lot of real world evidence that fines dissuade honesty.

I think most people did not read your comment :-)

Re: Wells Fargo Hit with $1B in Fines

#399

Post by uxp » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 2:54 PM UTC

rectang wrote: post #330

ansible wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think that even in this day and age, anytime you're getting hit with a billion dollars in fines, you'd sit up and pay attention. I'm not saying WF (or more importantly, their shareholders) actually cares. But you'd think that they would at that level.

A billion ain't enough. I don't have faith in Wells Fargo ownership or leadership to ensure ethical or even legal behavior in the absence of sufficient incentives. The market as currently set up encourages large scale misbehavior and destructive abuse by Wells Fargo of its customers. The stockholders are insulated by distance from the misery their company causes, and the executives outright make out like bandits, eve…

My parents opened an account for me with a bank when I was ~6 years old in 1988 that was swallowed up by Wells Fargo in the early naughts, which I maintained until about 6 years ago. At around the time I withdrew all my money and moved it to a local CU, I was going through financial hardships, and frequently would have less than a hundred dollars to my name. I never had any problems with them until then, when they would seem to hold up smaller debits as pending, even if a deposit was made which was also held as pending, until a larger debit was made and they were able to shift the order of transactions to maximize overdraft fees.

For example, $50 balance, $25 debit, $20 debit, $100 deposit, $80 debit resulting in a logical balance of $25 would be shifted to clear as a $50 balance, $80 debit (+$30 fee), $25 debit (+$30 fee), $20 debit (+$30 fee), $100 deposit leaving a balance of -$65 and a daily fee until I could find more cash to deposit and not use my debit card.

These transactions could happen over multiple business days, which made zero sense. Even now that I have a more stable job and a comfortable pillow of cash to fall back on, my CU seems to want to dictate where that money should go, instead of me shifting it around. Just this week, I went into a branch to withdraw some cash where the teller asked if I wanted to shift some savings into a money market account, which I agreed to, but said I didn't have much time that day to discuss it. Before I could go next door and get lunch, he had moved the money and zeroed out the account, which (despite being a saving account, is where my debit purchases get withdrawn from), managed to get me two overdraft fees when I bought lunch.

I'm seriously considering purchasing another mattress to store my money. In this day and age, there is no such thing as a bank. They are all financial institutions.

Re: Wells Fargo Hit with $1B in Fines

#400

Post by HoyaSaxa » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 2:54 PM UTC

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #51

clairity wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yay! i hope more people come to this kind of realization that small banks & credit unions are soooo much better--better service, better rates, better products, more forgiving about penalties and fees, and so much better at treating you like a real live human. wells, chase, citi, BofA & the other big banks should be broken up into 100s of regional banks. lack of dignity and respect for customers follows from "too big…

My impression was that most credit unions and small banks had pretty limited online banking, headaches with ATMs (not that I use them as much these days), etc. They are too small develop those services in-house, so I imagine they buy them as SaaS? Are they good enough now? I have Wells accounts I'd be happy to jettison...

You're right that traditionally credit unions and community banks have used antiquated consumer facing tech (online banking, mobile banking, loan applications, online account opening, etc) owned by 1 of 3 OG financial technology companies in the U.S.: Fiserv, FIS, and Jack Henry. They are all multi-billion dollar public companies that have formed primarily via acquisitions.

I started a company to challenge the incumbents after running a credit union as CTO.