<br>
<br>
<p>I thought that you like to walk 6 miles.</p>
<p>Ahh yes, BayBank. Bobby Orr. I had an account with them for a litttle while but then went to a credit union and I’ve been with them (and a few others where we had two accounts) since. We had an ATM with the credit union in our office for a long time but it’s gone now. But they permit 4 withdrawals from foreign ATMs and they pick up the fees. There’s a branch on my drive to work too.</p>
<p>BCEagle91…</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>I do like to walk… But…come on…sometimes…the convenience of walking a few blocks is nice. :)</p>
<p>I love Bank of America. We always go to the local branch. Top quality service, very personal, great. They charge us nothing to use their services and are extremely helpful. We really shouldn’t have gotten a HELOC (property prices falling) and our local banker called the division on the phone and was yelling, come on give them the loan, they have good credit, take a closer look, come on! They gave us more than we asked for, and didn’t ditch the loan when prices fell. They have gone above and beyond more than any other bank we’ve gone to in the last 30 years. With a smile.</p>
<p>Because of bank of america and companies like bank of america…the country’s standard of living will be lower and taxes will have to be higher…</p>
<p>The following isn’t bofa’s fault…but when I read about helocs…I do wonder what happened to the days when people bought homes they can afford and paid off their mortgages.</p>
<p>I don’t know what is going to happen when all these 60 and 70 year olds retire and they still have mortgages. On the plus side…rates are low…maybe there will be arbitrage possibilities.</p>
<p>I don’t have a banking problem with any of the banks we use, Chase is good to us, as is BofA, as is SunTrust, and a couple of others. Great personal bankers. Always see us coming and get us whatever.</p>
<p>I figure it’s my tax dollars at work, now, though. ;)</p>
<p>As a matter of public policy, I do have some issues with some of the behind closed doors things that have gone on with the FED, and Dstark is certainly right about that.</p>
<p>However, Taibi, as good as he is, is missing a few key elements. BofA was made to purchase Meryl Lynch, when they were in negotiations with Lehman. Meryl was run by an ex-Goldman guy, and Paulson HATED Fuld, who ran Lehman. So, they were sort of blackmailed into the Meryl purchase, and then BLAMED for the outcome. As for what happened with their purchase of Countrywide, I will leave it to your imagination to decide if that was something they “wanted” or something they were “convinced” to do.</p>
<p>Think about it this way, Dimon takes Bear Sterns for next to nothing in a fire sale, at the start of all of this, and then, the FED and treasury turn to BofA, “tag you’re it.” </p>
<p>There’s a price to being “master of the universe” when you’re not really one of the masters. They were down in Charlotte, and they were being dictated to by the guys up in NYC. They got the short straw on a lot of this. This is why so much of it has been kept secret. Not everyone got to take over Bear. Some got stuck with Meryl and Countrywide, at obnoxious prices they didn’t get to set.</p>
<p>From the article:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Here is the real key. Taibi goes wrong, here, because instead of asking WHY the government has guaranteed more for BofA than anyone else, he rails on it. But, BofA was asked to purchase Countrywide, and they were MADE to purchase Meryl. Earlier in the article, he holds BofA responsible for lending Countrywide did in 05. </p>
<p>But, BofA was just a giant receptacle, as in, “You take all this bad stuff into your system, and we will take care of it.” So, since the FED promised to keep the numbers secret, they agreed. Then, of course, the crash was so much worse than any of them expected when Lehman was allowed to fold, and now the “facts” come out. But they aren’t exactly the facts. </p>
<p>Taibi has done well getting these stories, and I’m not saying BofA was lilywhite, but being stuck in Charlotte, they were forced to take down a lot of stuff the other guys didn’t have to even look at. They aren’t as favored and they weren’t as favored, and now, it looks as if they were responsible for Mozillo and Thain, but they were just doing what they were told needed to be done, and what they were promised they would have assistance getting out of, by the FED.</p>
<p>If he wasn’t looking for only ONE story, he had a really good story here, how the BofA CEO and Fuld, since they weren’t “in” were forced to take a fall, and others were allowed to stay standing.</p>
<p>I’m not sure why BofA took over Countrywide. I have wondered about that…</p>
<p>I have never read anything that stated that BofA was coerced into buying Countrywide.</p>
<p>Poetgrl…do you have anything on the countrywide deal?</p>
<p>I thought bofa did want countrywide…because the bank wanted market share and misread what was happening in housing…</p>
<p>Slightly off topic…this refinancing of mortgages…people I talk to are so caught up in cutting their monthly payments…but they aren’t looking at the
extra years that it will take to pay off their mortgages. Somebody has a 30 year loan, and has 15 years left on it. Then refinances by taking out a 30 year loan. That is not the equivalent loan. The equivalent loan is a 15 year loan…a person with 15 years left on a mortgage should be looking at 15
year loans.</p>
<p>BofA “rescued” countrywide.</p>
<p>We should put together a timeline. We should start with Bear. I’m too tired to do it right now, but if you do it, you will start to “see.”</p>
<p>What you will see if you simply read this one article is that the government is backing BofA out of the Countrywide and Meryl Deals. That’s all they are doing. But since those were some bad situations they had to take over, it looks humongous. It looks as if BofA isn’t just trying to get out of that business, but all they’ve been doing is trying to get out from under that for the longest time. </p>
<p>I think when we finally get to look behind the curtain of what really happened, or when our grandchildren get to look at what happened? They are going ot see that BofA was a huge fallguy.</p>
<p>Let’s put it another way. Why on EARTH did it only take five minutes for BofA to be “allowed” to purchase countrywide? A deal like that does not happen in a week, like that unless the government is already shopping for a buyer, like with Meryl, or Bear.</p>
<p>BofA was the largest retail mortgage broker in the US during the first 9 months of 2007.</p>
<p>BofA had a 2 billion dollar investment in Countrywide before the bank bought Countrywide.
It bought Countrywide in early 2008… Before Lehman blew. BofA bought countrywide for stock. BofA expected to get a Large tax deduction of several million dollars with the purchase. There was no government help with the purchase. I don’t know if there was coercion or not. </p>
<p>I think you are right that BofA was played for chumps and was the fall guy in the ML deal.</p>
<p>I just don’t think BofA should be given a pass. BofA made a lot of mistakes on its own.</p>
<p>[Bank</a> of America to acquire Countrywide - Business - Real estate - Mortgage Mess - msnbc.com](<a href=“http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22606833/ns/business-real_estate/t/bank-america-acquire-countrywide/]Bank”>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22606833/ns/business-real_estate/t/bank-america-acquire-countrywide/)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I know you know how to ‘read’ these articles.</p>
<p>Also, fwiw, I don’t think BOFA gets a pass, or Lehman, for that matter, but I DO think, at this point, the interesting story is who took a fall and who didn’t, and, really, why some remain entirely unscathed. Lewis was fired. Others went under. Who remains? Why?</p>
<p>But, I will agree, there is no direct evidence that BofA was coerced into buying countrywide. I just have a sense that part of the deal for taking on Meryl had to do with taking “care” of the countrywide situation.</p>
<p>Even the Fed, at the time that the ML deal went through, had no idea what was going to happen when Lehman failed. They were stunned. They wouldn’t have allowed it to happen if they’d known. So, I’m sure there were promises made…</p>
<p>At the end, when Lewis was trying to get out of the ML deal, he wasn’t allowed. They threatened to remove him from his job. That’s on the record. So, really, even if, and I’m not sure it’s true, but even if they “wanted” countrywide? They did not want ML. </p>
<p>Anyway, I’m not really critiquing the banks in this, I’m actually critiquing Tiabi for getting lazy. There’s a better and more interesting story here, imho.</p>
<p>My understanding is that the Fed does shotgun weddings when banks fail and I think that this happens all the time (we’ve had how many bank failures in the last 3 years?)</p>
<p>I was going to start a new thread titled, “I Hate my Bank” but then I thought, “why reinvent the wheel?” and did a search and found this thread.</p>
<p>How often do you check your SAVINGS account statement? Me, not too often. Just checked mine, and noticed that I have been hit with a $12 service charge each of the past 3 months because my balance had dropped below $2500. On a savings account? really? It’s all in the fine print, but honestly, with interest rates at 0, I don’t know why I even have a savings account. My wife says it is all my fault and she wants to keep the account open due to “convenience.” I think she is just too lazy to change to a credit union. Everybody has their hand in my pocket! If I don’t watch them like a hawk they will try to sneak some money out of me, whether its the bank, or the cell phone company (loves to slip in $10 charge for worthless “services” I did not order), or the water company with an inflated bill, or my steadily rising cable bill, or the less subtle tax collector. Instead of providing a product or service that has value that I am willing to pay X for, they just want to sneak some extra money out of my pocket and into theirs.</p>
<p>I check my account every two or three days. Or every day if I’m doing a fair number of transactions. It’s pretty easy to check them on a smartphone with the bank’s app.</p>
<p>NJRes, I check our accounts depending on our need to check on a transfer or a transaction but I definitely check all bank and credit union accounts once a month to reconcile them via a personal finance mgt software. Perhaps, you can ask customer service if the bank will waive the fee if you link the savings account to a checking account and a money market account and the accounts combined balance is at a particular amount. </p>
<p>For example, I believe BofA will waive the monthly fee if the combined balance is $25k for all linked checking (individual and/or joint), savings (individual and/or joint) and money market (individual and/or joint).</p>