Nationalized Citibank
(Video NSFW people! Turn down your speakers or use earbuds.)
The New F***ing Citibank – watch more funny videos
Funny thing is that I had accounts with these people back in the day, and their operation wasn’t too different from this…..
It appears that the local banks in the area are doing well but the major bloodsuckers are in trouble.
It may seem out of character for the resident right-winger (libertarian populist might be a better definition) to say these things but the banks are out to screw you in any way they can.
There is the great credit card ripoff with the automated ‘gotcha game’. The victims are not deadbeats (who should not be extended credit in the first place) but decent folks who pay their bills on time and usually cough up more than the minimum balance, Mislay a bill by a few days twice in a year and you will be paying an interest rate once associated with a mob loanshark.
As traditional bank services vanish (remember when you got back cancelled checks?) the fees for services have escalated far beyond actual cost. Be overdrawn by a dollar or so and the check will be honored. Then you are gouged for $40 bucks or so for the overnight ‘rent’ of a few dollars. Think of the annualized interest rate being charged. Again, mob loansharks were a lot more lenient even though they had to break a limb or two ‘to encourage the others’.
Is it just possible that some of the ‘payday loan’ operations are tied to ‘respectable’ banks? What they do is legal but is it moral and ethical?
Just wondering…..
Granted I neither utilize a great deal of gov’t services nor frequent gov’t run offices but I find the concept of the clip rather dumb. (I realize it’s comedy and all.)
The DE DMV (the big one in Wilmington on 13) runs like a fucking Swiss timepiece. My wife had an issue last year with the Social Security Administration that was cleared up with one (5 minute) visit to SSA. My father-in-law is retired gov’t who gets VA pension and uses VA medical and it is pretty good relative to most other health benny’s I’ve seen. And the services at the VA hospital in North East, MD are actually pretty decent.
When are we going to stop this charade that gov’t run shit is so disorganized and unproductive? It’s like we just say the same thing over and over even if it isn’t true…
DG — I’ve always worked for the private sector and never quite understood how people could think that life over here is that much more controlled or sane. That Citibank clip I thought was unintentionally ironic — a barely functional bank getting worse because the government would run it (which it won’t) without acknowledging the government’s role is enabling the behavior that makes that bank barely functional in the first place. Kind of like Republican Senators this weekend calling for Citi to fail.
I don’t have much call to access government services, either (and that DMV does work like a clock) and my view of the worst of government behavior comes when a department becomes a nexus for crony politics or political paybacks.
Great point. I too have worked in the “private” corporate world my entire adult life (13 years in banking and finance), and I can assure everyone it is a big, disorganized, disfunctional mess.
This vid is lame. The basis of it straight out of the utopist-libertarian/capitalist viewpoint of anything touched by the gov’t turns to shit….well, didn’t Citi turn to shit all by themselves? Shiteh!
I’m with DG and Cassandra. I work for a major corporation and I can tell you it’s just as dysfunctional and bureaucratic as any of the worst government offices. I found going Delaware’s DMV to be quite pleasant, actually.
Yes VC, the Republican mantra that government is the problem is still a major part of our discourse. Why else would Geithner say things like (paraphrasing) governments do a poor job running banks. I have to say that bankers did a poor job running banks. Maybe we should get some of those DE DMV people in there to run Citi.