Visual source: Newseum
First, an update on Occupy Wall Street:
Wall Street protesters scrubbed, mopped and picked up garbage at the corporate-owned park they have been occupying in an attempt to stave off a scheduled cleanup Friday that demonstrators suspect is a pretext to evict them.
While moving out mattresses and camping supplies, organizers were mixed on how they would respond when police arrive at the request of Zuccotti Park owners to help remove the occupiers from the public plaza so it can be cleaned.
Some protesters said they would resist; others planned to cooperate but engage in nonviolent civil disobedience if they are not allowed back in the park.
Meanwhile:
The owners of Zuccotti Park announced they will postpone their scheduled cleanup of the area shortly before an anticipated show-down between police and protesters determined to hold their ground.
For more information on the latest, check out this early morning post from Chris Bowers.
The New York Times on the news that JPMorgan third-quarter revenue dropped 11%:
Long overdue federal restrictions on hidden overdraft charges and excessive debit card fees have begun to take a bite out of bank profits, and that should be happening. But the banks and their investors tend to see any rules and regulations that slow revenue growth as undue and overly burdensome, and they are pushing back. The question is whether lawmakers and regulators will stand up for the new fee restrictions and other rules as banks resist.
Banks, habituated to gouging their customers, are already trying to recoup lost revenue with dubious new charges, like Bank of America’s $5 monthly fee for using a debit card. The move has infuriated customers and led President Obama to rightly warn against mistreatment of customers in the pursuit of profit. But Bank of America has yet to relent — a stubbornness that may be from of a belief that aggrieved customers won’t do better elsewhere. On Thursday, five Democratic congressmen led by Peter Welch of Vermont asked the Justice Department to investigate whether the big banks were engaging in “price signaling,” a form of collusion in the setting of prices.
The big banks are also resisting proposed regulations on capital levels, derivatives and investing practices. If successfully implemented, the new rules will help to curb the kind of reckless trading and irresponsible lending that caused the crash and recession. That will slow revenue growth, but it is the price of a more stable system.
Paul Krugman gives his take on how Republicans refuse to blame Wall Street for the crisis:
Above all, the long crusade against financial regulation, the successful effort to unravel the prudential rules established after the Great Depression on the grounds that they were unnecessary, ended up demonstrating - at immense cost to the nation - that those rules were necessary, after all.
But down the rabbit hole, none of that happened. We didn't find ourselves in a crisis because of runaway private lenders like Countrywide Financial. We didn't find ourselves in a crisis because Wall Street pretended that slicing, dicing and rearranging bad loans could somehow create AAA assets - and private rating agencies played along. We didn't find ourselves in a crisis because "shadow banks" like Lehman Brothers exploited gaps in financial regulation to create bank-type threats to the financial system without being subject to bank-type limits on risk-taking.
No, in the universe of the Republican Party we found ourselves in a crisis because Representative Barney Frank forced helpless bankers to lend money to the undeserving poor.
Representative Welch is asking the DOJ to investigate whether big banks are colluding in imposing fees on debit card use:
Following Bank of America's lead, JP Morgan and Wells Fargo have announced similar plans. Together they comprise three of the country's four largest banks. So Welch wants the Justice Department to investigate whether the firms are communicating, publicly or otherwise, with the intent to impose collective prices, rather than let customers decide.
"We urge you to immediately open an investigation to determine whether banking trade associations and/or individual banks have violated antitrust laws," he wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder. "Specifically, we are concerned that communications between banks and bank associations that may amount to price signaling or collusion have occurred in the wake of Congressional action to reform debit card swipe fees."
Community banks are using Bank of America's $5 debit card fee to bolster their own business. On the heels of a Florida bank deciding to pay customers to use their debit cards, a bank in Urbana, California follows suit:
The Peoples Savings Bank of Urbana says, starting in November, it will credit customers $5 each month for each account with a debit card. [...]
Kadel said customers have asked whether Peoples Savings planned to impose debit-card fees.
“Paying our customers to use our debit cards is the kind of symbolic gesture that eliminates their fears,” Kadel said.
Finally, New York Magazine runs through the end game on the Wall Street protests.