Danny Schechter - ColdType

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didn’t think that they, how could they, I couldn’t believe that
they could be so careless, how they could be so heartless.”
Yet Wall Street investors are better protected than ordinary
consumers.
Crimes against investors are punished; crimes against consumers
are often not. These crimes certainly affect more people
– shady lending practices that are calculated and often illegal,
deepening debt, exploiting customers, overcharging borrowers
with arbitrary late fees, and imposing other hidden costs
that bilk consumers. Most of these practices are calculated and
done deliberately.
A few examples: “loans by payday lenders” sometimes
charge 400 percent APR – which means the average borrower
pays $800 for a $500 loan. Experts say unauthorized bank
overdrafts strip $17.5 billion from consumers each year. The
spillovers from foreclosures (due to poor upkeep, theft and
the like) in which occupied houses next door lose value have
already cost lenders $502 billion in 2009. Also, no limits have
been imposed by the credit card reform bill (signed by the
President in 2009) on ever-rising interest rates.
What’s worse, debt collectors continue to illegally harass
customers. Consumer groups report collectors are urging people
to sell their blood to pay down their credit card debt.
These practices have been exposed for years but have yet to
be fully outlawed or prosecuted.
Worldwide financial crime has become a growth industry
with law enforcement running fast to keep up. Whole websites
are now devoted to cataloging financial arrests. I asked corporate
crime specialist John Coffee why we haven’t seen more
prosecutions.
His response: “Well first of all, we may, yet. It takes a good
deal of time.”
One reason that the Administration has put forward a