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Originally published October 21 2003

As Consumers Dive Deeper Into Credit Card Debt, Banks Rake In Profits

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

When you try to open an account at Wells Fargo, they work up a customer "profile" and try to figure out how to sell you every financial instrument under the sun, from company loans and house loans to higher fee checking accounts. And that's all before they take your fingerprint, which is now apparently required at all Wells Fargo branches (thumbprint, actually, which sounds less incriminating than "fingerprints").

Personally, I would never do business with Wells Fargo. But a lot of people certainly do, and Wells Fargo's profits are only exceeded by the rising personal debt and bankruptcies of American families. There's a whole lot of money leaving the hands of hard working American families, and much of it is heading straight into the coffers of the largest banks (who seem to rake in extraordinary profits whether the economy is good or bad).

A lot of the money loaned to customers as home mortgage loans, it turns out, isn't used to buy homes. In many cases, customers are cajoled into taking out new loans on their homes in order to refinance credit card debt. After a few months of spending on the balance-free credit cards, they're back into credit card debt and the banks own their homes, too. How's that for customer service?

Home loans are already dishonest enough to start with -- they're designed so that your first few years' payments hardly touch the principal. You've paid $10,000 over the last year and still don't own more than a couple hundred dollars worth of equity. To market home mortgages to people as a way to pay off their credit card debt is extremely irresponsible.

There's far too much predatory lending going on these days. By and large, banks aren't really interested in helping their customers, they're simply interested in bilking them out of a few more dollars each month. That's why American workers are dubbed "wage slaves" by the people in the know. It's the illusion of financial freedom in a system that keeps siphoning your hard earned cash, day after day, year after year, until the day you die. And then you get to pay for that, too.


San Francisco - Wells Fargo continued raking in higher profits in the third quarter by capitalizing on the booming mortgage market and enticing customers to buy more of its other products. The San Francisco-based bank said today it earned one-point-56 billion dollars -- or 92 cents a share -- for the three months that ended in September. That's an eight percent increase the same period last year. The company says the profit would have been even higher if not for a 171 million dollar charge to pay for moves designed to boost the bank's future profits.



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