Go Forth and Protect Your Credit Union from Bankers' Lobbyists!

Jason Jones did a hilarious skit once on Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show." He showed Americans riffing on American banks (complaining about them and saying they don't trust American bankers) and then showed contrasting videos of Canadians praising Canadian banks, showing that Canadians trust their bankers and consider them to be honest brokers. That was years ago, and American banks haven't improved any since then.

Take Wells Fargo, for example. Wells Fargo employees created new accounts in customers' names without the customers' knowledge; forced redundant auto insurance on 800,000 car-loan customers (earning $73 million in fraudulent gains while causing 250,000 delinquencies and 25,000 wrongful auto repossessions.

When the Consumer Financial Protection Agency was in the hands, briefly, of Richard Cordray, a reputable and honest director, Wells Fargo was fined $185 million for fraudulently creating new accounts in the names of customers without their knowledge. Cordray left, and Trump appointed Mick Mulvaney, who is also Trump's budget director, to also direct the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. In other words, as in the days of Dubya, Trump's foxes are once again guarding the chicken coops in the cabinet and in federal agencies.

In the stock market crash of 2008, Wall Street CEOs, including banks too big to fail, were bailed out by taxpayers without being made accountable for any of the money they were given or being made accountable for the federal crimes they committed. Erroneously, former Pres. Obama said that what Wall Street CEOs and their top management had done "was unethical but not illegal." That was a lie. Wall Street CEOs, including banks, broke numerous federal laws including racketeering (RICO, originated to prosecute the Mafia); accounting fraud; Sarbanes-Oxley violations; anti-trust violations; perjury; bribery; and so on.

The whole thing could happen all over again because former Pres. Bill Clinton (D), with Phil Gramm (R-TX), Thomas J. Bliley, Jr. (R-VA), and Jim Leach (R-IA), repealed Glass-Steagall and both major parties make nice with Wall Street even when Wall Street runs amok and destroys our economy. Wall Street loves Trump's massive transfer of wealth from the working class and the middle class to corporations and the richest of the rich (83% of the gains go to the rich, and those gains are permanent, unlike the tax cuts for average folks, which are temporary).

Wall Street also gave a lot of money to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama when they ran for president and afterward. Former Pres. Obama commands higher speaking fees ($400,000) because he was president, and he and his Attorney General, Eric Holder, did not indict or convict a single Wall Street banker or other Wall Street CEO who violated federal law during Obama's presidency.

So what are emboldened banks doing now that Republican Kim Reynolds and the Republicans are in charge of both houses of the Iowa legislature? They've set their lobbyists to work on the non-profit status of credit unions to take away their "advantages" of being honest brokers and giving the average man and woman a break instead of taking them to the cleaners like the banks do with their fees, surcharges, and whatever they can get away with.

If you do business at the University of Iowa Community Credit Union, which gets top marks, be aware that Iowa Republicans and Iowa bankers' lobbyists could affect you and your bottom line. Iowa Republicans want to raise taxes on non-profit credit unions. Congress actually protected the non-profit status of credit unions.

We found the University of Iowa Community Credit Union after we went to our local bank to start savings accounts for our two young children years ago. Our local bank was going to charge our children $8 a month each for their savings accounts. We demurred because the charge would have wiped out their savings. The UICCU had free savings accounts for our children and paid interest! Pretty soon we all did business at the credit union.