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Wells Fargo to pay $3.7B for mistreating customers

finance.yahoo.com

101–110 of 465 posts

Re: Wells Fargo to pay $3.7B for mistreating customers

#101
post #8

WIth two massive scandals within 5 years I think this bank should be broken up as part of its punishment. It's clearly too big to run an honest consumer safe business.

What about the 268,000 employees who work at Wells Fargo, 99% of whom had nothing to do with this? Most of those employees are just normal people trying to make a living, and it would be wrong to screw them because their bosses, who they never met or had anything to do with, did something wrong. Shutting down a company is the nuclear option -- it hurts many people who did nothing wrong, including most of the employee…

> "What about the 268,000 employees who work at Wells Fargo, 99% of whom had nothing to do with this?"

Boo-fukken-hoo. They were all part of the problem - the grease of the machinery if you will; something this bad doesn't go unnoticed by so many people. This was clearly an "inside job" with many, many people involved internally.

I would have no sympathy for any of them, even if they'd end up losing their own homes as a result (sweet, sweet irony that would be!)

Re: Wells Fargo to pay $3.7B for mistreating customers

#102
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a question, do people really protest in designated areas in the US? I know sometimes there are riots but from what I can see on the media it looks like people gather somewhere close to the subject and chant and wave banners. I find it strange because in Europe the norm is to disturb the daily life. Farmers spray policemen with milk, train operators stop working, the younger and more anarchist ones burn cars an…

In the US, the police (and people not involved in the protests) will happily beat you up, run you over, or shoot and kill you for disruptive protests.

While police violence is a problem, this comment is wildly off base.

Re: Wells Fargo to pay $3.7B for mistreating customers

#103
post #67
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a question, do people really protest in designated areas in the US? I know sometimes there are riots but from what I can see on the media it looks like people gather somewhere close to the subject and chant and wave banners. I find it strange because in Europe the norm is to disturb the daily life. Farmers spray policemen with milk, train operators stop working, the younger and more anarchist ones burn cars an…

In the US I bet any farmer who sprays police with milk would be instantly shot

Two years ago, we had protesters literally set police precinct on fire, and not only nobody got shot, but in fact nobody faced any consequences.

Re: Wells Fargo to pay $3.7B for mistreating customers

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit unions are all the rage when the economy is roaring, but they are typically the first to run into issues or fold on first sight of troubled waters. Their history is full of examples of having to be rescued by the federal government, including all the times commercial banks had to be rescued. The main difference in my view is struggling commercial banks get absorbed, where as struggling credit unions close. I a…

I don't think much of this is true. While corporate credit unions did participate in TARP[0], for example, that's not the common perception. Not only were they primarily corporate credit unions rather than consumer credit unions, far fewer of them participated in the program than banks: around 20% as many. For people, credit union accounts are federally insured just like bank accounts are, but credit unions are typic…

Perhaps I summarized incorrectly, I was getting most of that information from here https://ncua.gov/about-ncua/historical-timeline

(your linked sources are horrible sources just in case you were not aware: both are paid media fronts designed to drive revenue through clicks, not reliable sources)

Re: Wells Fargo to pay $3.7B for mistreating customers

#106
post #95
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charles Schwab will refund your ATM fees from any ATM. So will First Republic. So will TD Bank. Many Credit unions do the same.

Schwab for everything only problem is that sometimes I need cash and don't want a bunch of 20s

Find another bank's ATM that spits out a choice of 20/50/100s

Re: Wells Fargo to pay $3.7B for mistreating customers

#107
post #38
post #9

I feel so much cognitive dissonance realizing that there are hard working people literally losing their home and shelter wrongly while I might be sitting across from them at any time, expecting them to behave within normal social boundaries. Imagine a family with a new born, working 50+ hours at a physically demanding job, making $80k/yr combined, and then losing their home for no reason... and then being expected to…

I get what you mean, but what's the alternative? How should you behave if you're exempt from normal social boundaries because of your personal tragedy? Shout at random people? Throw things? Punch some guy in the face? Seems to me it's better to try and be kind, and treat others right despite your horrible situation. The person you're treating cruelly because of your personal trauma could easily be going through a tra…

The alternative is to hold the institutions that inflict this suffering on people proportionately accountable for it.

One of the reasons we don't, is because the socially required reaction to this abuse is to suck it up, and suffer in silence.

What is the equivalent of a bank having its home wrongly taken away from it? Locking the doors on one of its branch offices and boarding it up for a few months?

There's an enormous level of asymmetry in the damage a large institution can inflict on a person, either by accident, or malice, compared the reverse. And that's not okay, and we shouldn't consider it to be okay. We need to do better.

Re: Wells Fargo to pay $3.7B for mistreating customers

#108
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A hierarchy of things to steal is a weird father-son lesson I must say.

There are greater sins: we have a military, you know. Raising a child means teaching nuance in ethics. I've had similar conversations with my kid, arising from questions like "why do robbers exist?" "Why are some people homeless?" "Why do murderers exist?" Ethics is full of gray areas, and refusing to engage in hard conversations increases the risk that your kid will make the wrong call if they ever find themselves i…

I agree that they main point of ethics is providing a decision framework in the grey areas (if they were clear-cut, there would be no discussion).

But that seems off-place here. It leads to the question about "when is it okay to steal?" There's an obvious "defense of necessity", but that doesn't stop at stealing someone's means to a living. If it's legal to steal food in a disaster, it doesn't matter if that food comes from a neighbor's pantry or the bakers shelfs. The colloquialism described seems like one of those heuristics that feels true at first glance but quickly breaks down on further inspection (which is what a lot of ethical debate seeks to accomplish).

Re: Wells Fargo to pay $3.7B for mistreating customers

#109
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit unions are all the rage when the economy is roaring, but they are typically the first to run into issues or fold on first sight of troubled waters. Their history is full of examples of having to be rescued by the federal government, including all the times commercial banks had to be rescued. The main difference in my view is struggling commercial banks get absorbed, where as struggling credit unions close. I a…

I did a thought experiment. If FDIC and NCUA deposit insurance didn't exist, would I trust a bank of a credit union more with my deposits? I landed with credit unions due to the overt malfeasance of banks. The FDIC exists to keep banks afloat, because they're untrustworthy on their own.

If everyone moved their money to credit unions, they'd become just as bad as banks.

Re: Wells Fargo to pay $3.7B for mistreating customers

#110

My father taught me that if you are going to steal from someone you never steal his tools or his vehicle, because those are the means he uses to make a living and you dont want to be responsible for his kids going hungry. Given this history of Wells Fargo this isn't a one off accident. It's often said but people really need to go to prison for this, not club fed either, send them to be with the other carjackers.

My dad told me not to steal.
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