“Louisiana’s plans to finance about $600 million in interstate projects got tangled up Thursday in a dispute over moves by two banking giants to restrict gun sales by their business customers.” Oh, don’t you just hate when that happens?
The State Bond Commission, which regulates the roadwork financing plans, disagreed about how and if Louisiana should retaliate against Citigroup and Bank of America for their firearm restriction policies.
“Do I as your state treasurer want to do business with companies that impose these kinds of policies?” said Treasurer John Schroder, the Republican who chairs the commission. “And the answer to me was clearly no.”
It’s almost as if the two megabanks — not to mention companies like Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Delta Airlines and Symantec — didn’t consider that roughly half the nation still staunchly supports the Second Amendment.
But despite Schroder’s best efforts, Louisiana’s Democrat governor stepped in to keep the projects on track..and keep the offending banks involved.
Gov. John Bel Edwards’ administration successfully objected to language pushed by Schroder and Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry that was aimed at keeping the banks from being eligible to work as underwriters on the interstate financing deal.
The Democratic governor issued a statement describing himself as “a staunch defender of the Second Amendment” and calling Thursday’s meeting “an ugly display of political posturing that could have jeopardized a massive infrastructure plan for the state of Louisiana.”
Schroder will still have opportunities to make the banks’ lives more difficult.
Anger at the banks is expected to again emerge as the commission works through the monthslong process to piece together the road deal, including when financing partners are chosen in July.
Actions have consequences.
Yes, actions have consequences, but money talks. Hell, it screams.
Leave it to a chicken-shit Dem to offer up fellatio to anyone trampling on the right of the plebs to be armed.
didn’t ya know that is all they are good at….. giving blowies to dictators
The same way Trump gives blowies to Putin?
Oh yeah, totally. Tell me, how many Tide Pods do you ingest on a daily basis? Do they make your tum-tum feel sad?
Don’t you liberals have some condoms to snort or tide pods to munch?
As a Louisiana resident, let them fix our roads. Tell them to go to hell after
Yank their license to do business within the state.
Ensure that no employee pay / insurance funnels through any of their, or their sister institutions.
Raise their taxes on their commercial real estate BECAUSE BANKS COST THE STATE MORE IN PROTECTION MONEY.
Gov. John Bel Edwards’ administration NEEDS TO GET THE CATAPULT TREATMENT, AS THEY’RE OBVIOUSLY TAKING GRAFT.
Nobody screws with the governor’s slush funds.
Lived in Lousyana at one time. It was a real thigh-thumper to see the attorney general convicted and jailed for jury tampering, then run for re-election from his jail cell; he won. It was also at a time when two demoncrat state senators were convicted of federal crimes, were jailed in Texan, and still drew their state salary.
Huey P. lives.
Being a lifelong resident, I can tell you that the Louisiana electorate is rock-solid evidence that Proverbs 26:11 is one of the most damningly accurate quotes in the Good Book. They bitch about the corruption, they piss about the wasteful spending, and they moan about the terrible infrastructure… and then they re-elect the same bastards over and over again.
One of the things I truly enjoyed about Lousyana was that I never had to water my lawn.
Oh, there was one other thing….met my future wife.
Earl K. Long (Huey’s brother) once commented that “One day the people of Louisiana will elect good government, and they won’t like it!”
Always thought of Lousyana as a Blue state. What you are describing sounds more like Republicrats.
The banks have a myopic policy view which is going to boomerang on them. I’m not doing any business with them nor will I carry a credit card connected to them.
Yeah I’m just one guy but that’s how a movement starts.
I dumped B of A over a decade ago. They are a terrible bank and they mistreat their customers.
At one time, stationed in Californication, I had a bank account and credit card with BoA. One afternoon, I received a letter from the BoA branch that one of my checks bounced. Left on TDY the next day, and upon return two weeks later, I had several letters (and charges) for bounced checks.
The oddity of having bounced checks was a serious offense to the military, and my check cashing privileges on base were suspended, and I had a face-to-face interview with my commanders. This sent me on a deep dive into my account history and current activity.
No matter how many times I balanced the checkbook, and reviewed every cancelled check, I calculated a positive balance in the account. Took the artifacts to BoA, and they conducted a review. The result remained several bounced checks. A worse outcome could not have ensued.
About a week later, one more review of the account seemed compelling. Only this time, I looked at the little computer generated numbers at the right hand bottom edge of the cancelled checks. To my amazement, those numbers reflected the amounts written on each check….except one. That one number indicated an amount significantly different from the check. In fact, it was the exact amount remaining in the checkbook on the day the check was paid by the bank. BoA assured me that the computer generated number was the amount used by BoA, not the actual hand-written numbers.
BoA corrected my account (leaving a positive balance), wrote letters to my commanders, but assured me that there was no way that what happened could actually happen. “Computers, donchaknow?”.
Accounts cancelled by me.
Several years ago BOA bounced a check of ours that overdrew the account by 22 cents. It was because of the way they processed the money in the account. My cash deposit that day was not entered until all the checks that came through the same day were debited. They charged us $25, the store that got the check back charged us $35, etc. I was royally pissed and went to the bank to ask WTF?! That’s when I found out about how the computer did debits and credits. The condescending manager said “well that’s our policy and to bad”. I said then you had better pray that you don’t screw up and put to much money into our account by mistake because my policies are equally bad. He laughed and said ” the bank doesn’t make mistakes like that”. So a few weeks later karma happens. My wife calls and says are you planning a big surprise or something? I said no, why? Well we have 11 thousand in checking that you deposited before you left town and I was just wondering. I assured her I did no such thing and the money wasnt really there, blah blah blah. But go withdraw it and close our accounts and do not write any checks. So she did and they gave her all 11k plus our money. We didn’t spend it, I knew they would call. Sure enough about three weeks later I get a call from the same asshole manager saying we have a problem and you need to come down to the bank. So I took 10k of the cash and went down to the bank. They had me go into his office and they explained that a teller made a mistake and a deposit that wasn’t ours was put into our account and they need it back or I was going to jail. Again with the attitude. So I smiled and said no need for that, here is the money. They snatched the bag out of my hands without a thanks or anything and started to counting. He looks at me and says there is only 10k here. I said yep, here is a statement why, you see my policy is that I charge x amount per day to keep your money safe, x amount to hand deliver, etc. The thousand dollars is my fee. That’s just my policy, so to bad. And turned around and left. Never head a word about it. F++k BOA.
Have read that it is very common practice to debit accounts first so as to generate the most amount of overdraft fees.
Wife and I established a “safety” fund to pretty much cover our credit card activity each month. So, we pay off the card each month. Actually received a call from one of the bank “managers”, asking why we don’t run a balance on the credit card. After explaining, the manager asked if we could let the balance run over the end of the accounting period at least once a year. The manager said they noted they were not making any money from our credit account, but were providing us “reward” benefits. I agreed to try to remember to let a very small balance run over a period each year.
me personally i would have made that amount a dollar or less and only one single month of the year if i had gotten that call. these days i dont even have a credit card. i have a debit card with visa capabilities for online purchases and i withdraw most of my money out of my account as soon as i get paid. oh i save just not in the bank. have not trusted any bank since i was 16 and what happened in Greece a few years ago only strengthened my distrust of banks and govt
ROFPMSL so bloody love how you dealt with them. they deserved it and more besides. BTW the founding fathers also distrusted banks with a passion…. as much distrust as they viewed govt and standing armies. will also add that is a mix of banks, corrupt legal system and govt that have that have made “insurance” so vital. insurance is also another scam to remove peoples money from them sadly. they make a calculated gamble on the fact that you never need it and in the mean time are making billions off the money. as the risk of you needing to use it go up so do the premiums but in a way that they still make many hundreds of thousands more than they ever have to pay out. also you dont get your money back if they do make bad investments and go under while the CEO’s still get a massive payout. now in saying that i am not against them making a profit, what i am against is them having no liability to their customers if they do make bad investments. if they make the decision to put all the customers money into very high risk investments then they also deserve to suffer the consequences of those actions and be completely liable to the investment those customers have made
“After explaining, the manager asked if we could let the balance run over the end of the accounting period at least once a year. The manager said they noted they were not making any money from our credit account, but were providing us “reward” benefits.”
Yup, credit card issuers have a name for customers like you.
Deadbeats.
It pisses them off when you do that. Some cards have been known to dump people like you, because they don’t make the money they expect from you…
There is a price to be paid for not having a running balance on credit cards: lower FICO.
Contacted the three major rating companies. All said that FICO scores are lower (still “good”) because the scores weight payment history significantly. If a credit request is made soon after paying the credit card balance, there is no actual “credit history”. In essence, “credit history” is “ability to pay”. Relying on more indirect indicators for ratings, the credit score goes down a bit.
Meh. I haven’t paid a penny in interest on a credit card or anything else in well past 20 years, have something past $100K of credit on several cards, and more companies keep seeking my application for another “pre-approved” card or soliciting my acceptance of a cash loan without my applying for one. As for my FICO score, why would I care what it is? I don’t plan to ever take out a loan again in my life. I think that either banks work in different ways in different areas, or you guys are dreaming about these outrages.
Also, I doubt that cards show no credit history when you always pay on time. Some 15 years ago, I put a new truck on a credit card, a $25K purchase on a $30K card, and by the end of the week I received notice my limit was raised to $50K. They make money on you using the card.
“I dumped B of A over a decade ago.”
Me too. B of A is a criminal conspiracy masquerading as a bank
Fractional reserve banking itself is criminal. It might be “legal” in a given society, but so might be slavery and murder. Legal does not mean moral, honest, or ethical. The entire idea behind fractional reserve banking is to be able to charge interest on capital that does not actually exist, but is just thought to exist by the ‘customers'(rubes who don’t know any better).
That is the difference between interest and usury. If I loan you a herd of cattle, I’m entitled to some of the value produced as that herd creates new calves next spring. If, on the other hand, I still charge you that fee, but charged on a piece of paper I gave you that says I OWE you one herd of cattle, that’s usury. This is because that piece of paper does NOT produce calves, nor indeed any sort of value at all. Other than a transfer of your wealth as a producer, to me, a non producer. Obviously, this is unethical. It’s also the entire basis of the fractional reserve scam. It only survives because most do not understand the system, so they just knuckle under and get raped continuously.
“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks…will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered…. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.” – Thomas Jefferson in the debate over the Re-charter of the Bank Bill (1809)
And so it has been, exactly as foretold by a man who obviously DID understand the fractional reserve system.
“fractional reserve” also serves another useful purpose: inflation.
When a single dollar is deposited in a bank, the value of that dollar is one dollar. When that same dollar is loaned, the effect is as if two dollars exist. The natural result is inflation of the currency. The benefit is that, left alone, inflation will eventually make millionaires of everyone. Happy outcome, no?
“But everyone in my ivory tower clique of urban intellectuals is anti-gun, and they has all the money!”
BofA ,,, Alligator bait down in the bayou
I assume the state only needs the banks to sell the bonds (easy work for a nice fat fee.) I cannot believe that many other banks, preferably regional banks in the mid-South or Southeast, would not be able to sell them just as easily. They are, I assume, tax exempt revenue anticipation bonds backed by the “full faith and credit of the State of Louisiana.” Admittedly that may not be worth much but more than the same from Illinois, and the fee charged is roughly the same no matter the bank. Why in the world (other than corruption) would a state place a rather small offering like $600MM with BoA or CitiBank instead of a regional bank? You don’t think they actually compete for business based on fees? Or maybe no-one except Arabs and Chinese will buy Louisiana bonds?
It’s Lousyana. Similar politics to Ar-kansas.
Don’t believe what you read, or anything you see with your lying eyes.
I cancelled my Citibank credit card and waited on hold to tell them exactly why.
finally, a republican i can admire, someone who will stand up to these corporations that make incredibly stupid business decisions, but i do have to agree with the comment made about trump giving blowies to putin!!
If only there were more banks to choose from … lots of smaller banks so one of them could step in.
Interesting how bank after bank is happy to ditch customers willing to pay them for services. They must work for somebody else.
Gov. John Bel Edwards is, in my opinion, just the worst. A trial-lawyer has been elected in a struggling, litigious state. Guess what? The courtroom is the only place to make a living in Louisiana as everybody sues the few businesses that haven’t left to take refuge in Texas.
Take note: Louisiana is as purple as red and trending toward blue thanks to New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
“It seems to us an unnecessary risk to use for our project banks who engage in extortionate restraint of trade, and risk legal action under he commerce clause.”
Don’t do business with people who will use the fact you’re doing business with them to jerk you around on other things. (One reason to never, never, never take NYS money, or other kinds of “aid.”)
That said, the NY banking weenies are only doing what they and their DA’s office colleagues do — mighty nice whatever-it-is you have there. Would be a shame if anything happened to it…
Oiigarchs gonna oligarch.
Why don’t real Americans start a bank called “The Second Amendment Bank of America”
I wonder if there is a way to block Citi Bank and B of A from doing business in Louisiana? Given that I’m about as far removed from legal expertise as can be, possibly others can answer that question.