US POLITICS SPRING 2011: Let's just call off this country.

xpost Fuck that. I just said there must be more to the story. Maybe the clerk has a record of being an asshole? Maybe the cop had a bone to pick? Maybe this happens all the time at this branch? Who knows? It's just an oddly incomplete story for such a tale of massive economic tragedy.

alfred's prudence is the right way to operate but i find that story totally easy to believe just because it's chase

who are (post-wamu-takeover) my bank

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/assets_c/2011/07/Ryan-Split-Wine-cropped-proto-custom_2.jpg

and Josh wrote:

Not that I wouldn't put it past Chase to fuck this guy every which way they can.

"massive economic tragedy"

Like, a bank clerk can't just have a non-violent, non-confrontational guy arrested, can he? Even if it was a fake check, let alone a real one.

As an ex bank-clerk: if the teller has suspicion, he brings it to the branch manager. If the branch manager believes a check of that amount is fraudulent, and especially if it appears to be a fraudulent check issued by you, espeeeeecially if it's a fraudulent cashier's check which has a half dozen fraud-guards embedded in it (as this one seems to have been), policy is you hold IDs and the check itself and stall the customer until police arrive.

I am really, really curious why the teller & manager thought it was fake.

Maybe losing your car (which you owed less than $100 on) and your job, in a single weekend, is not a massive economic tragedy for you?

xp

like it sucks and sympathy for dude an all that, i just want to know what the manager et al saw that convinced them it was fake

A black guy with a funny name.

C'mon, Michael: you don't view economics from a moralistic perspective?

Sure I do, just not from a set point of view and I try to stay open to different perspectives. My cosmology isn't married to any particular economic belief. Conjugal intimacy to that.

How is it that they couldn't verify ONE OF THEIR OWN checks?!

notice too though that he was going to deposit the thing, not cash it. this means he's an accountholder, which for the bank should have lowered the suspicion-meter significantly. at the branch i worked at most of my customers were spanish-speaking construction workers who'd come in every 3-4 weeks with a big post-project check, so dude's activity wouldn't at all be unusual. that's not where the red flags were coming from. i really want to know wtf happened here

ok wait wait

Njoku qualified for the first time home buyer rebate on his tax return.

"It was really important, I had a vehicle I was looking on paying off," said. Njoku. And it wasn’t just any vehicle. “It was a 2001 Infinity I-30, silver…just like my favorite car, “he said.

Njoku signed up to have the rebate deposited directly into his Chase Bank account. But when the IRS rebate arrived, there was a problem. Chase had closed Njoku’s account because of overdrawn checks in the past. The bank deducted $600 to cover what he owed them and mailed him a cashier’s check for the difference--$8,463.21.

But when Njoku showed up at the Chase branch near his house intending to cash the check, he was in for a nasty surprise.

The check had Njoku’s name and address on it and was issued by JP Morgan Chase. But the Chase Customer Banker who handles large checks at the Auburn branch was immediately suspicious.

“I was embarrassed,” Njoku said. “She asked me what I did for a living. Asked me where I got the check from, looked me up and down—like ‘you just bought a house in Auburn, really?’ She didn’t believe that,” he said.

The Customer Banker said the check looked fake, so she took it, along with Njoku’s driver license and credit card, and called Bank Support.

After waiting for about 15 minutes, Njoku said he got impatient and told Chase he was leaving to do an important errand. By the time he got back, the bank was closed. Njoku said he called customer service and asked them what he should do. He says they told him to go back to the bank the next day to get his money.

But when Njoku arrived, it wasn’t the money that was waiting for him.

“They just threw me in jail; they called the police and said this guy has a fraudulent check,” Njoku said.

Yeah, but it also says they had closed his account for too many NSF checks.

xp

ok i see what happened here--teller goes to verify the check, already suspicious for racist reasons. verifying can take a long-ass time. then, she stretches the phone cord around the corner to peek at the dude and see if he's fidgety or whatever, red flags. he's gone. big red flag. instead of continuing to hold (and because they're about to close and she wants to go home) she assumes based on his jetting on this giant check (biggest of flags) that her racist suspicion is correct and it is a fake. she hangs up the phone without verifying that its actually fraudulent. tells the boss, who doesn't himself verify that it's fake, and it goes from there.

ie this teller and manager need to get sacked for a half dozen reasons

He left w/out his license and credit card (or noting their closing time)?

Unwise at best.

The mgr really, really needs to be fired or at least reprimanded.

ah wait wait this isn't even a teller, this is a banker, they don't even get the same fraud training tellers do

jesus

this is all really dumb and everyone should be fired

On another note, David Brooks just applauded the "level of serious negotiation" going on in Washington right now. "It's great!" he enthused. "Both parties are serious!"

Mr. Brooks was wearing motley at the time, bells a tinklin' as he twirled a harlequin streamer

Yeah, I just heard Brooks say that on the radio. That dude needs a kick in the nuts.

I'm pretty sure he'd like that.

I'd call it the Kick in the Nuts Tax.

"It's what we need!"

I think it'd be hilarious if the contract of just one of these high-profile insider commentators was voided and then the person laid off, for budgetary reasons.

"We're sorry, Mr. Brooks, we already have enough useful idiots. If you have a problem with it, file a grievance report with your union rep."

MoveOn.org trying to stop the Obama debt deal (see below). Although I've read elsewhere they'll try to spin the Social Security cuts with fiscal jargon to disguise them and to get Dems to sign off on them.

Even if Mr. Boehner gets his 121 (Republican) votes, he'd still need help from 96 Democrats for the bill to pass...[and only] 166 Democrats to pick from...About 80 of them, in fact, are members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.2
That means we just need to convince 70 Democrats to sign on to their letter. Then the deal being cooked up to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits becomes politically impossible.

x-post

I'd be happy not to have Brooks, George Will and Charles Krauthammer on Sunday talk shows, even if they substituted crazier right-wingers for them

So what's the O/U we default? And should I buy some "ProShares Trust Ultrashort 20+ Year Treasury ETF"

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2010/06/18/eric-cantors-investment/

(nb link is likely a non-story as Cantnor's spokesperson has said that his other larger holdings would suffer if we default)

(regardless, is there a more hateable Rep in the 112th Congress than Cantnor? What an absolute anus)

(regardless, is there a more hateable Rep in the 112th Congress than Cantnor? What an absolute anus)

too many poll options

a look at public opinion:

http://today.yougov.com/news/2011/07/08/77-agree-defaulting-debt-would-be-serious-economy-/

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2011-07-08/dbtceilch4_q36.png

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2011-07-08/repchoice_pid_q26.png

YOU (gov)

goole (and those charts) OTM

inflexibility has its rewards: you don't have to flex, ever

flexibility has a downside: you wind up flexing, especially when attempting to deal with the inflexible

most painful part is that this applies to intellectual flexibility at leasgt as much as to any other sort

The results for that debt ceiling poll for all respondents is depressing. Clearly people have no fucking idea what default is.

so glad obama caved on extending the bush tax cuts without GOP concessions to raise the resulting voodoo economics debt ceiling. go barry

love you Nancy, never change

that's pretty awesome. hope it's not just talk

krugman says our economics conversation upthread is fatalistic -

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/09/the-fatalist-temptation

I think Krugman is right; that was my point yesterday re. wanting new elites.

i really have no easy answer as to why this kind of rotten thinking has sunk in so deeply among economics professors and policymakers.

In a political role reversal Friday, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) warned that Congress risks severely harming the economy and exacerbating the unemployment crisis if it fails to raise the national debt ceiling in the next four weeks.

"While some think we can go past August 2nd, I frankly think it puts us in an awful lot of jeopardy, and puts our economy in jeopardy, risking even more jobs," Boehner told reporters at his weekly Capitol briefing.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/07/boehner-failing-to-raise-the-debt-limit-puts-economy-in-great-jeopardy.php?ref=fpb

Fuck jobs. Jobs<<<<<THE CONSTITUTION!!!!!!!!!

Did the founding fathers have jobs? No!

I have only a very doddery grasp of the larger effects of raising the debt limit / not raising the debt limit. as far as i can tell, financial meltdown is imminent one way if you're a fiscal conservative, and the other way if you're not. not trying to be glib here, just to point out that it's actually pretty hard to figure out what's going on w/o a background or good understanding in finance/economics

what i mean is, can somebody please explain this in short, neutral sentences?

If we don't scrape the popcorn off the debt ceiling, we die.