National People's Action Protest at American Bankers Association
Representatives from National People’s Action (NPA) visited the offices of the American Bankers Association (ABA) on March 23 to protest the group’s opposition to S. 61, the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act. S. 61 would lift the ban on court-supervised mortgage modifications and could prevent up to one million foreclosures. AFFIL supports this legislation and we’ve been following it closely (it’s currently stalled in the Senate, and may be addressed after the April recess).
NPA protesters demanded – and got – a meeting with ABA President and CEO Ed Yingling. While in Washington, the group’s leaders also met with Ben Bernanke, and will release detailed policy demands surrounding foreclosure prevention and other topics later this week. Read more about the protest from The Hill.
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Americans for Fairness in Lending 
I am a Bank of America shareholder and I am appalled. I just submitted my vote for the February stockholders’ meeting in Charlotte, NC. This was shortly after a telephone conversation during which I heard of yet another instance of the bank torpedoing the attempt of an unfortunate homeowner to sell his home in a short sale. There are thousands of these, many of which have fallen through because of the inexcusable and negligent failure of Bank of America to process the paperwork in a timely manner. You would think that employees of a huge institution that was recently bailed out of bankruptcy by the American taxpayer would find the wherewithal to do the jobs they are receiving such generous salaries and bonuses for.
Not only have the nation’s largest banks participated in the irresponsible practices which have brought us to the brink of ruin, and are now doing their best to destroy the legitimate attempts of families and small businesses to save themselves, but they are awarding themselves with obscenely huge salaries and bonuses at the expense of the American taxpayer and hoarding funds to enrich themselves that are supposed to be used to fund business growth in the few places where it is possible. And now there’s the Bank of America television commercial stating, “Committed to helping the country in its economic recovery.” That must be an advertising cliché.
The current economic crisis which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of families losing their jobs and homes can, in part, be laid at the doorstep of the nation’s banking industry, which was so incompetent in their lending practices. You will say the feds made things worse by their failure to oversee your negligent operations and you would be correct. However, if you had been conducting business in an ethical and moral way, a lack of federal oversight would not have been a problem. Legal? Maybe. Ethical and moral? Definitely not!
Any institution such as yours who does business in this irresponsible manner should be forced into downsizing until it is no longer “too large to fail”.
In my opinion and that of many others in the United States, many of whom are your stockholders, Bank of America is a disgrace to the American banking industry and to the principles of our country. We are appalled at the blatant greed of your executives in awarding themselves and others in your company and its subsidiaries with reprehensible bonuses at the expense of taxpayers for a failure to perform their jobs. Those of us who actually earn a living every day would be out on the street looking for new jobs if we displayed the pathetic traits your officials have shown in the past years. Oh, I forgot, many of us ARE out on the street looking for jobs and much of the reason is your insatiable gluttony for more money at the expense of anyone you can rape and pillage.
I will be sending a copy of this letter to my elected representatives in Washington as well as to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the American Bankers Association.