Wells Fargo: Riding the 1% Stagecoach of Injustice

Wells Fargo has been using its stagecoach to loot American communities for more than a decade. After boosting its bottom line by selling subprime mortgages, by the end of 2011, the bank owned $19 billion worth of homes that used to belong to American families.

Wells Fargo has been condemned for the aggressiveness of its foreclosure activity.  MSNBC recently reported that the bank’s employees are required to fulfill quotas of 10-11 foreclosures processed per day. In February, Wells Fargo settled charges of foreclosure abuse brought by 40 states, joining four other foreclosure banks in paying $25 billion. One of the settled charges included having robots sign foreclosure documents that attest to having been reviewed by human lawyers.

After Wells Fargo forecloses on a property they do a better job maintaining the properties in white communities than in communities of color.

Wells Fargo has faced a series of fines over its abusive lending practices for nearly a decade. In 2003, California regulators fined the bank $38 million for mailing “live checks” to potential customers without adequately disclosing the terms of the loans. Last July, they paid a record $85 million fine for steering customers into costlier loans than their credit rating qualified them for.

Where have the profits from preying on customers gone? Not very much goes to Uncle Sam. Over the last four years, Wells Fargo reported $69 billion in U.S. profits and paid just $2.6 billion in federal corporate income taxes, an effective tax rate of just 3.8%. During the period 2008-2011, Wells Fargo collected more than $21 billion in tax subsidies from the U.S. Treasury.

A big chunk of the bank’s profits also winds up in the pockets of Wells Fargo’s highly compensated executives. CEO John Stumpf received $18 million in compensation last year, an increase of $800,000 over 2010. Stumpf’s retirement pension plan is valued at $16 million. Quite a nice reward for ruining the financial futures of so many Americans.

Scott Klinger is an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Hazel Zimmerman, a family farmer from Carlisle, Iowa, is arrested at Wells Fargo office in Des Moines, Iowa

A family farmer, a Methodist minister, a Vietnam veteran and seven others were arrested today at the national headquarters of Wells Fargo’s Home Mortgage division in Des Moines, Iowa. Among those arrested was George Goehl, the national director of National People’s Action (NPA).

Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (ICCI) organized the protest to demand that Wells Fargo put everyday people before corporate profits. Dozens of protesters entered Wells Fargo’s downtown Des Moines offices and refused to leave until CEO John Stumpf agreed to give the 99% Power coalition 1 hour of time during the shareholders’ meeting agenda in San Francisco Tuesday to present their grievances to big bank officials. See more pictures at ICCI’s flickr page »

NPA Director George Goehl Arrested at Wells Fargo offices in Des Moines, Iowa.

“We’ve asked Wells Fargo four times in the past four weeks for 1 hour on stage tomorrow in San Francisco and they’ve said no every time,” said Stephanie Simmons, a former Methodist Minister from Guthrie Center, Iowa and ICCI board member who was one of those arrested. “We want to talk about Wells Fargo’s shameful record on tax dodging, home foreclosures, predatory lending, political contributions, and CEO bonuses.”

“Wells Fargo’s mortgage office here in Iowa is making billions in profits every year by kicking hardworking families out of their homes and they aren’t even paying taxes on their ill-got wealth,” said Kenn Bowen, a Vietnam veteran and retired communications worker from Winterset, Iowa who was arrested Monday. “That ain’t right. Wells Fargo should be broken up into smaller, community banks that will put people before profits.”

The 99% Power coalition of community organizations, faith communities and labor organizations is demanding that Wells Fargo:

• stop home foreclosures
• reduce principle balances on underwater mortgages
• pay their fair share of taxes
• get their big money out of the political system
• stop financing payday lenders, private prisons, factory farms, and coal plants

“Not only does Wells CEO John Stump believe his bank is too big to fail, he also seems to believe they are too big to be held accountable,” Goehl said. “We’re here today in Des Moines, Iowa and tomorrow in San Francisco, California to prove him wrong.”

The ten everyday people arrested Monday for trespassing at Wells Fargo’s Des Moines offices are:

George Goehl, NPA executive director
Stephanie Simmons, former Methodist minister and CCI board member
Kenn Bowen, Vietnam veteran and retired communications worker
Jim Yunclas, retired Ag extension officer and CCI board member
Hazel Zimmerman, family farmer
Misty Rebik, Iowa CCI latino community organizer
Shawn Gude, John Hopkins graduate student
Jessica Reznicek, unemployed worker
Ryan Laudick, unemployed worker
Julie Brown, bartender

NEWS & POLITICS  

AlterNet / By Maria Poblet

99% Power Movement Kicks Off With Massive Actions at Wells Fargo Shareholder Meeting

Every major bank holds its shareholder meeting in the spring, making their nefarious plans about how to invest the billions they have stolen from us: ranging from mineral extraction in the global south to foreclosures in East Oakland.

But 2012 will be different than last spring, and the spring before it.  This year, there’s a nationally coordinated effort of the 99% to fight back.  We may not have the money for our own strategy meetings in fancy boardrooms, but we have something much better: people power — the millions of people who are fighting to save their homes, struggling to pay their bills,trying to get out from under their student loans, are ready to take action to make things better.

We’re starting off with Wells Fargo.

A recent Forbes cover story called Wells Fargo “The bank that works.” Which begs the question: Who does Wells Fargo work for?

In the last year before the subprime bubble burst, Wells Fargo issued $74.2 billion worth of subprime loans, contributing to the current foreclosure crisis. In spite of its role in helping to crash the economy, Wells Fargo was rewarded with a $43 billion bank bailout from the federal government. To thank the taxpayers that funded this, the company commenced slashing 6,000 jobs over the following 4 years while foreclosing on $17.5 billion worth of homeloans that it owns.

The taxpayers who bailed out the banks got sold out by Wells Fargo.

The result has been an increased economic burden for working people: more foreclosures, depressed wages, fewer jobs, and a deteriorating quality of life. With all the damage done to the economy and the American people, there were no consequences for the executives at WellsFargo like CEO John Stumpf, who in 2011, earned a whopping salary of $17.9 million, according to The Washington Post. This number included a raise of $300,000, more than most people make in 5 years. Worse yet, he received a 2011 tax cut of more than $1 million.

Read more at Alternet

Ad will call out Wells Fargo for tax dodging, predatory lending, and foreclosure crisis one day before the big bank’s shareholders meeting in San Francisco, California.

Des Moines, Iowa — Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (Iowa CCI) members will run a half-page “Wanted” advertisement in Monday’s Des Moines Register blasting Wells Fargo for profiting at the expense of everyday people and hardworking families in our communities across the country.

The ad will run Monday, one day prior to a Wells Fargo shareholders’ meeting in San Francisco, California that is expected to draw thousands of protesters.

The text of the ad reads “Wanted: Wells Fargo, for profiting at the expense of our communities. This spring, the 99% is taking back our economy. Tomorrow, hundreds will confront Wells Fargo at their shareholders’ meeting. Iowa CCI challenges Wells Fargo on tax dodging, home foreclosures, predatory lending, private prison profiteering, financing payday loans and factory farms, political contributions, bank bailouts, record profits, and CEO bonuses.”

A version of the 10”x10” ad may be viewed by clicking here.

Iowa CCI members and their national partners in the 99% Spring coalition – including National People’s Action and the New Bottom Line – demand one hour of time on Tuesday’s shareholders meeting agenda to lay out their demands to Wells Fargo’s shareholders.

Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement is a group of everyday people who talk, act and get things done on issues that matter most. With thousands of members from all walks of life — urban and rural, black and white, immigrants and lifelong Iowans — CCI has been tackling tough issues and getting things done for more than 35 years.

By Rev. Richard Smith

Rev. Richard Smith

You wouldn’t know it by talking to Wells Fargo, but the Easter season has arrived. The austere days of Lenten fasting, of skipping things like chocolate or tequila, or doing the hard work to mend broken relationships — these have given way to Easter egg hunts for our kids, daffodils on the kitchen table, and laughter at each others jokes. (Yes, in some Christian traditions, people actually gather in church during Easter just to swap their favorite jokes.) It’s an amazing and joyful season. And one that Wells Fargo is, sadly, clueless about.

On Monday of Holy Week, with families back home shopping for Easter egg decorating kits and preparing our homes and churches for Easter, several leaders of citizen groups from around the country met in Des Moines with John Campbell, Wells Fargo senior vice-president for corporate social responsibility. Our groups are highly respected: National Peoples Action, PICO National Network, New Bottom Line, Enlace International, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, Take Action Minnesota, and SEIU (Service Employees International Union).

We told Mr. Campbell some of the all-too-familiar stories of families losing their homes, barely surviving under crushing debt, because Wells refused to reset the principal on their underwater mortgages to present market rates. We pointed out to him that anyone who has paid more than zero in income taxes has paid more than Wells Fargo and suggested that maybe it’s time for them to pay their fair share. We told him to discontinue Wells Fargo’s shameful payday loan product that lures in the most vulnerable people and then slaps them with 120% interest. We told him to stop funding politicians who want to deprive people of color of their right to vote, and to stop distorting our political processes with their army of lobbyists. (In 2011, Wells Fargo spent $7.82 million on lobbyists, and since 2008, it has paid these guys more than $18.4 million. These hired guns are now at work fighting things like the Homeowner Bill of Rights now before the California State Legislature.) Our suggestions to Mr. Campbell came out of the bitter tears of the people in our congregations and neighborhoods.

Perhaps most movingly, two young Latinos told Mr. Campbell of being pulled over by police for minor traffic violations, then being hauled off to one of the Wells Fargo-funded detention centers where undocumented immigrants are held, sometimes interminably, for deportation. There, cut off from their families, they were publicly strip searched, forced to eat from garbage bins, denied medical treatment, and, when they complained, thrown into solitary. We suggested that Wells stop investing in such cruel institutions.

John Campbell said no to every one of our suggestions. And here we see Wells Fargo’s idea of Lent. As far as they’re concerned, you can put the chocolates and the tequila back on the top shelf.

Unlike the real Lent that awakens and enlivens us, culminating in the joy and laughter of Easter, this Wells Fargo pseudo-version has brought only heartache and financial ruin to many hard-working Americans, torn apart many immigrant families, kept at risk our still-fragile economy, and left many of us living as indentured servants. It has diminished the spirits of far too many of our people.

Just a few weeks before the Des Moines meeting, on Ash Wednesday, 45 San Francisco clergy had sprinkled ashes in front of the Wells Fargo corporate headquarters. It was our way of inviting them to repent and begin repairing some of the damage they caused. This was simply Ethics 101 at work. Since we ourselves were entering the season of repentance, we thought we’d invite them along.

We never heard back. Guess they decided not to join us. Then in Des Moines, Mr. Campbell confirmed our worst suspicions by cavalierly dismissing every constructive idea we put before him.

Judging from Mr. Campbell’s words, Wells Fargo never got the email about Easter and how it’s time for them to stop imposing their harsh pseudo-Lent on the rest of us.

On April 24, Wells Fargo’s shareholders will hold their annual meeting here in San Francisco, and I, with my newly acquired share, will be there along with many clergy from around the country. By then, the Easter season will be in full swing, and our town will be awash in cherry blossoms to prove it.

But as we look ahead to that meeting, will my fellow shareholders get in sync with this amazing and beautiful Easter season? Will they, unlike Mr. Campbell, really hear the pleas of millions of their fellow citizens to reduce the principal on underwater mortgages, stop funding inhumane detention centers, pay their fair share in taxes, and stop distorting our political system by bankrolling politicians who want to deprive people of color of their right to vote?

Or will Wells Fargo finally take responsibility for their actions, and begin to repair the damage they have caused? Will they at last stop imposing their cruel “Lent” on the rest of us, and get in sync with the joy and laughter of this Easter season?

—The Rev. Richard Smith is priest associate at the Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist, San Francisco.

By Maria Poblet, published on OrganizingUpgrade.com

Ah, spring.  Tulips, chocolate bunnies, and…. capitalist conspiracy.

Each spring the shareholders of every major bank get together to make their strategic plans for the year.  Bank of America will meet in Charlotte, NC.  Wells Fargo’s meeting is at their headquarters in San Francisco’s financial district.

What’s on their agenda? Plain and simple: profiting at the expense of our communities. I can just picture it: a guy in an expensive suit presenting a power point to a conference table full of other people in expensive suits, taking notes on their Ipads.

First slide:  (Bar Graph) Predatory loans were AWESOME! Lets make sure we follow through, and foreclose all those people out of their homes! There must be at least 3 houses left in East Oakland that we haven’t taken…let’s get in there!

Second slide: (Politician shaking hands with John Stumpf) Keep those wheels greased! Lets have the best democracy money can buy, and make sure the cities of Oakland & San Francisco keep investing all their money with us, letting us do whatever we want with it.

Third slide: (Twenty-somethings with backpacks on) Invest in America’s youth!  With skyrocketing tuition, all we have to do is hook them young and they’ll be paying us for the rest of their lives! Incidentally, we should invest in Ramen noodles, because they will also have to live on those for the rest of their lives with the rates we’re charging.

Read More on OrganizingUpgrade.com >>