Loan sharks and their lobbyists really know how to put the “ick” in eth-icks.
Though they’ve tried to buff-up their public image by calling themselves “consumer lenders,” their game remains the same ethical mess it’s always been. They target poor and financially struggling people, entice them to borrow with come-ons touting “quick & easy” money, then hook them to installment loans with interest rates up to 36 percent. At such rates, it’s hard for these hard-hit people to repay the bank on time, so most are forced to keep borrowing more money just to pay down the previous loans. To make this even ickier, the sharks are especially fond of setting up their loan offices around Army bases so they can prey on America’s low-paid, financially-stressed soldiers.
The good news is that several state legislatures are taking action to provide relief. The bad news is that their relief is not for the borrowers, but the banks! With an army of lobbyists and a multimillion-dollar arsenal of campaign cash, the industry has already induced legislators to lift interest rate caps in eight states – most of which have a large number of military bases.
The cynical claim of the loan sharks (believe it or not) is that they are suffering financial hardships. These poormouthing bankers say that to make “an acceptable profit,” they must be allowed to charge borrowers more than 36 percent interest. Acceptable to whom? One of the largest purveyors of these loans, a subsidiary of Wall Street megabank Citigroup, reported a hefty 31-percent profit increase last year – under the old rate structure.
What we have here is a brazen purchase of legislative favoritism by some of the richest financial interests in America – allowing them to increase their exploitation of some of America’s poorest people. What’s “acceptable” about that? The whole scheme is a shameful hustle.
“States Ease Laws That Protected Poor Borrowers,” The New York Times, October 22, 2014.

Why won’t the CIA even say the word “torture”?

The spooks are spooked. Not by anything that foreign enemies might do to America – but by what our CIA spooks and their political overseers did to America. By “America,” I mean the essence of our country, our ideals and the moral values we hold up as a beacon to the world. That beacon shines less brightly today because of one word: Torture. Even as the Bush-Cheney regime was professing that, “America does not torture,” Bush himself authorized secret torture sites, the National Security Council approved the CIA’s request to torture prisoners we held, and the Justice Department crafted secret memos to rationalize the torture.
Now, the officialdom and spooks of that day are spooked – not because of what they did and then lied about – but because they got caught. The gruesome, nauseating details of their brutal torture of fellow human beings has just been documented in an in-depth investigative report by the Senate Intelligence Committee.
So spooked is the whole hierarchy by the shamefulness of this – and so intense is their culture of denial – that even today’s officials cannot bring themselves to say the word “torture.” John Brennan, the current CIA director, dodged the blunt truth of the word by saying, “I will leave to others how they might want to label those activities.”
Activities? Do they think they can paper over the depravity of torturing people by calling it an activity? That only heightens the shame of what the hierarchy did in America’s name. Brennan then tried to bury the horror by saying he hopes “we can put aside this debate and move forward.”
Toward what? If today’s officials can’t even call it what it is and simply move forward without holding anyone accountable for their criminal and immoral acts of torture, then future officials are free to do it again. And you can bet they will.

The pain of inequality among yacht buyers

In the spirit of holiday harmony and good will toward all, I say it’s time for you working stiffs (and even those of you who’ve been badly stiffed and can’t find work) to extend your hands in a gesture of solidarity with America’s millionaires.
Why? Because we now share a common cause: Inequality. You don’t hear much about it, but millionaires are suffering a wealth gap, too, and it’s having a depressing impact on both their level of consumption and their psychological well-being. While it’s true that millionaires are still full members of the 1-percent club, that generalization overlooks the painful and personally-grating fact that mere millionaires today are ranked as “lesser 1- percenters.” They don’t dwell in the same zip-codes as the über-rich few, who comprise the uppermost one-hundredth of the 1-percenters, with wealth starting in the hundreds-of-millions of dollars and spiraling up into multiple-billions.
No doubt you’ll be saddened to learn that this divide between The Haves and The Have It Alls is widening. For example, have you checked the yacht market recently? Sales of your 100-to-150-footers are down by as much as 50 percent from 2008 – just one indicator of the hidden suffering being endured by the merely rich.
In this same time period, however, yacht sales of your 300-footers, with prices above $200 million dollars, are at all time highs. As a New York Times wealth columnist noted, “For decades, a rising tide lifted all yachts. Now it is mainly lifting megayachts.”
Imagine how this makes people with only a few million dollars feel. So let’s reach out to comfort our downcast brothers and sisters. Tell them, “We’re all in this inequality fight together,” and invite them to come to the next rally in your area to raise America’s minimum wage above the poverty level.
“Another Widening Gap: The Haves vs. the Have-Mores,” The New York Times, November 16, 2014.