David Dayen at The Intercept reports: Just Four Months Ago, New Wells Fargo Chief Said No Changes in Sales Strategy:
Wells Fargo’s New CEO, Tim Sloan, told a leading industry trade publication in June 2016 that the bank’s aggressive sales culture and “cross-selling” targets was perfectly appropriate and “is not going to change.” This was years after top executives at the bank knew that thousands of their employees were responding to those sales targets by generating fake accounts.
Sloan is replacing John Stumpf, who stepped down on Wednesday amid the ongoing scandal, for which the company has been fined $185 million by federal regulators and faces investigations from the departments of Justice and Labor.
Before the fines were announced, Sloan, who was groomed to replace Stumpf for years, sat down with American Banker to talk about the company on June 16. By that point, the Los Angeles Times had already uncovered evidence of fake accounts, and the city attorney of Los Angeles had filed suit over the allegations (the suit would eventually be folded into the larger settlement). The L.A. Times also had disclosed that the bank was under federal investigation.
American Banker asked Sloan, “Wells has come under scrutiny for its strong sales culture. Is there any sense that the bank has pushed that strategy to the limit?”
“No,” Sloan replied.
When Sloan made these statements in June, thousands of Wells Fargo employees had already been fired for creating fraudulent accounts. Wells Fargo eliminated all product sales goals for their retail bank branches on Oct. 1 of this year. [...]
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2009—Race-Mixing? Oh! Think of the Children!!
Since the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in 1967 in the case of Loving v. Virginia, it's been against the law to keep interracial couples from marrying the way Virginia did with its Racial Integrity Act of 1924. The ruling also knocked down the anti-miscegenation laws of 15 other states still on the books in the late '60s. But Justice of the Peace Keith Bardwell of Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana, didn't get the memo, or rather, he did but won't obey the law. He recently refused to marry an interracial couple, just as he has done on at least three previous occasions.
Bardwell, whose elected term of office runs until 2014, told the Associated Press: "I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way. I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."
As long, apparently, as they don't try to marry his sister. […]
The American Civil Liberties Union and local NAACP are looking into the matter. But how long before certain denizens of the national pundithuggery start braying that stopping Bardwell's outlawry would violate his principles? We can hear Glenn now: "Denying him his right to deny other people their rights is denying his rights!"
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin mines the most granular information on the voter universe. Josie Duffy Rice discusses the inspiring career of Brooklyn D.A. Ken Thompson, mass incarceration and the definition of violent crime, and the California ballot propositions on the death penalty.
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