The New American Slave

Occasionally I wake up in the morning and turn on the TV and there is an infomercial on. This morning it was something like “Debt Cures they don’t want you to know about”, a book they were trying to sell. It basically looked like the set of Desperate Housewives. Normally I switch channels right away, but a comment the author made really put the current situation with banks in the spotlight. They are creating The New American Slave.

Corporate Investigations Inc did a mini-post highlighting that some banks have started paying back there TARP money (Click Here to read that). You do have to give credit where credit is due, but some are asking if the banks just found a better place to get the additional money to bail themselves out. That may be the bigger truth.

That author selling his book this morning on that semi-annoying infomercial may actually know something. As Gomer Pyle would have said “Surprise! Surprise!”. He mentioned that the banks are “on record” as saying their “bread and butter” is the low income, uneducated, and mostly minority population. That is because they pay the biggest portion a banks income on higher interest rates, charges, fees, etc. They are also the first to get increases whenever they are dishes out.

Most of those people described are slowly reigned in the being an indentured servant by the banking increasing their rates, fees, etc to a level where their debt can never be repaid. Does this sound any different that a person paying the way to bring someone into a country, but holding a debt so high over their heads they can never repay it effectively making them a lifetime servant? It isn’t, and now the banks are branching out. They reaching out and lassoing in the lower middle class. So they look good by paying back some TARP money and profit by gaining a few thousand new American Slaves.

Reference Links:

• Debt Cures – I believe this is the infomercial that was on this morning.
• Bank credit card fees keep going up – USA Today article by Kathy Chu.
• Hard times make credit card industry tighter with a buck – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article by Tim Grant.
• Bailout banks raising rates and fees – Washington Post article by William Ehart.

Slavery never went away – the banks just bought out the previous owners and added some color. This is a very good example of quickly they forgot that the TARP money originally comes from the people of American.

-SWB

PS – This article is not defending those that over spent on their cards, it’s about the people the banks truly take advantage of.