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Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is under attack by the rich banks CEOs; You must act to protect consumers everywhere

  CORPORATE ACCOUNTABILITY AND WORKPLACE

AlterNet / By Dave Johnson

6 Unbelievable Ways the Big Banks Are Scamming You

Five years since the crash, the big banks continue to screw over their customers.
June 19, 2013  |

It is going on five years since the financial crash and three years since President Obama signed the meager Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, and the big banks are still scamming and conning and ripping off their customers. What a huge surprise.

After the financial crash, we heard about a laundry list of abuses and frauds that ranged from small things, like hidden fees, to pushing minorities into subprime loans and then switching them into more expensive mortgages at signing time, to huge things like selling trillions of dollars in complicated CDO schemes and making bets on derivatives of derivatives without having the reserves to pay off what they owed when the bets went bad.

Of course, no one at the top was prosecuted and the banks were allowed to settle a host of charges (which meant that their shareholders, not the executives who made the decisions, paid the fines). The bad behavior gave these giants a competitive advantage, driving out what good companies there were. So the costly and destructive bad behavior, schemes, cons and scams continue.

1. Falsifying Paperwork, Blitzing, Lying About Payments to Force Homeowners Into Foreclosure

This week, ProPublica released a report detailing the shocking ways that Bank of America has been pushing homeowners into foreclosure. Employees lied about documentation and falsified paperwork to force families out of their homes when these customers thought they were getting a loan modification under the government’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). To make matters worse, the bank gave bonuses to employees who were able to reach monthly quotas of people they forced into foreclosure.

According to a lawsuit against Bank of America, the bank used “blitzing” twice a month to deny HAMP applications even when the homeowner had fully complied with the program’s requirements; it gave employees $500 bonuses each month they forced 10 or more homeowners into foreclosure; it intentionally ignored applications for 30 days, then declared them late and forced homeowners to reapply; it closed applications even when they knew the homeowner had met all criteria; and it canceled loan modifications because of “late payments” when the bank’s records shows that payments had been made on time.

Of course, as long as the government refuses to prosecute banks and bankers for violating laws, and instead negotiating “settlements”  that require bank shareholders to pay fines, bankers will see no reason to stop this kind of activity.

2. Bank Protection “Service” Puts Consumers at “Greater Risk Of Harm”

Last week  a report from the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) found that the big banks are still scamming their customers with ridiculous fees that are hugely profitable for the big banks.

Three years ago the government required banks to ask their customers if it is okay (this is called “opt-in”) before they charge them for “overdraft protection” service. CFRB has been studying how this is working out, and its report shows that customers who do not opt-in to this heavily marketed “protection” service pay much, much less in fees than those who do. In other words, agreeing to use the “protection” actually puts you at a much greater risk of incurring expenses than those who are not “protected.”

According to  a McClatchy News report on a call with CFPB director Richard Cordray to discuss the report, Cordray said, “What is marketed as overdraft protection can, in some instances, put consumers at greater risk of harm.”

How much risk? People who are “heavy overdrafters” but still opt out of this service save on average more than $900 a year. But it isn’t just heavy overdrafters who are saving. According to the CFPB report “… the reduction in fees for those who did not opt in was $347 greater, on average, than for those who did opt in.” People who opt in are also more likely to lose their bank accounts, with the bank “involuntarily” closing it.

Banks have made $32 billion from these fees. So maybe this isn’t about providing a “protection” to consumers at all. As  NPR puts it, “Overdraft and non-sufficient funds fees accounted for 61 percent of total consumer deposit account service charges in 2011 among the banks in the CFPB report.”

3. Transaction Ordering

Not only do customers who opt-in pay more for this “protection service,” but the banks are still scamming them by causing the overdrafts that generate these fees. The CFPB report says that some banks still use “transaction ordering” to cheat customers out of additional fees. These banks post checks or debit transactions from large to small to trigger these fees. In other words if you write several small checks (or make debit card transactions) and then a big one that overdraws your account, they credit the large one first so each of the smaller transactions causes its own fee to be charged, even though those transactions occurred before the account ran out of money.

From the report, “The earlier in a sequence that an account becomes negative, the more overdraft or NSF transactions may occur.”

4. Forced Arbitration

Another big-bank scam on consumers is “forced arbitration” clauses in bank account, credit card, mortgage and other financial-service agreements. Forced arbitration clauses – also called mandatory arbitration or binding arbitration – require you to give up your legal right to take a big bank to court if it cheats or harms you. And if you don’t agree (which requires reading the entire agreement) you can’t get the account.

They way this works is that instead of being able to pursue your legal rights, you have to take your complaint to an arbitrator, and then must accept the arbitrator’s decision. The catch is that the bank gets to pick the arbitrator, and the arbitrators naturally know they’ll never work in this town again if they ever rule against the banks. So there is an inherent conflict of interest working in favor of these companies.

How is that conflict of interest working out for us? A 2007 Public Citizen report revealed that arbitrators working for the National Arbitration Forum (NAF) had ruled against consumers 94 percent of the time.

In another blow to the big banks, the CFPB is beginning to take steps to reign in forced arbitration clauses in consumer financial contracts.

The five-year-old Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act authorizes the CFPB and the Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate mandatory arbitration. The SEC is resisting implementing their part of this law, but the CFPB is conducting a survey to determine consumer awareness of forced arbitration clauses in credit card agreements.  On its blog, the CFPB said the study will “explore consumer awareness of dispute resolution terms in credit card agreements. The survey will gather information about consumers’ perceptions, preferences, and assumptions related to arbitration proceedings.”

5. Marketing Refinancing That Costs People

Thom Hartmann has exposed yet another banker scheme. This time banks are marketing a mortgage refinancing that promises annual savings of more than $4,000. But the scheme really just adds more than $37,000 to the cost of a loan.

Basically, the mailer focuses on lowering monthly mortgage payments, while neglecting to mention that the borrower would end up paying a higher overall interest rate, and would be adding 10 more years to the overall length of their loan. Hartmann  writes,

Back in November of 2012, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sent warning letters to around a dozen of America’s largest mortgage lenders and brokers, advising them to “clean up” potentially misleading advertisements, especially those targeting veterans and older Americans.

At the time of the CFPB’s announcement, CFPB director Richard Cordray said that, “Misrepresentations in mortgage products can deprive consumers of important information while making one of the biggest financial decisions of their lives.”

And, as we also know, deceptive mortgage advertisements like this can cause consumers to bite off more than they can chew, ultimately leading to a nationwide financial meltdown.

6. Banks Trying To Kill the CFPB

Over the years, scam after scam is exposed, and nothing has been done about it. But there is a new cop on the beat, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB’s job is to police the big banks, and protect financial consumers. Of course the big banks are trying to head this agency off at the pass.

The Republican Party and its conservative infrastructure have basically been contracted by Wall Street’s big banks to obstruct and even kill this agency. Senate Republicans have been blocking the confirmation and are still trying to obstruct the nominee to head up the agency. Republicans have been filibustering the nomination of Richard Cordray to be its director and even vowing to filibuster to keep any nominee from being confirmed to head the agency. President Obama finally  made a recess appointment of Cordray in January 2012. But this recess appointment runs out at the end of the year with no end to Republican obstruction in sight.

Republicans are also  trying to defund the agency. Republicans and the (billionaire, Wall Street, oil and tobacco-financed) conservative movement have also launched a propaganda campaign against the agency. Recently, at the Senate Republican Policy Committee website, “CFPB: Unaccountable and Unrestrained,” claims, “A recent action by the CFPB to monitor consumer credit cards and the spending habits of millions of Americans is raising new concerns in a government suffering from a trust deficit.” In an example of how the right’s echo machine works, the Heritage Foundation echoes this attack, alleging that CFPB gathering data for reports like this one is an example of government “surveillance” on consumers, “amassing an Orwell-worthy database on all manner of spending, including … overdrafts …”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren – the person most credited with the creation of the CFPB – spoke at a Senate hearing on the CFPB last March on the role of the CFPB and Republican obstruction of the agency:

“I see nothing here but a filibuster threat against Director Cordray as an attempt to weaken the consumer agency,” Warren said. “I think the delay in getting him confirmed is bad for consumers, it’s bad for small banks, bad for credit unions, for anyone trying to offer an honest product in an honest market.”

“The American people deserve a Congress that worries less about helping big banks,” she added, “and more about helping regular people who have been cheated on mortgages, on credit cards, on student loans and on credit reports.”

Don’t expect much to change until we have a government that is willing to take on these financial giants. As long as we keep seeing “settlements” with these giants instead of prosecutions, and as long as we allow big money to buy influence over our government, nothing will change.

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But the banks’ CEOs have huge incomes and the power that comes with being super rich. The rich banks and corporations run  the USA and form all of the policies. Citizens must speak up and vote appropriately.

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by mrnd5 on December 9, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Advocate for your needs and concerns as a consumer, agreements with 520 campuses that enroll more than 4.3 million students, America doesn't even know how we start wars, Annual Income of META BANK's CEOs, Bank Card Tax Refunds are an interest free loan to a bank, Bank Card Tax Refunds Fails Consumers, Bank Fees for Prepaid Cards, Bank Publicity that is simply "Garbage Talk", Bank Reform and Proper Regulations are Needed, Bank Reform needed, BANK REFORMS NEEDED TO BE CAREFULLY REGULATED, Bank Regulations must be enforced, Bank Tellers at MetaBank earn wages on the average that are below the poverty level, banking in Storm Lake IOWA, BankMeta lies to keep customers from their own money, Banks are creating economic servitude in the USA, Banks Designed To Keep Consumers in Debt, Banks have created all the rules for PREPAID CARDS, Banks Lying to Consumers To Trick Them into taking on Debt, Banks regrouping, Be sure to vote and then to follow up asking elected officials to serve you as a consumer, Big Corporations and Banks run the world, Blackhawk & METABANK to be avoided, Complaints Against Meta Bank, Consumer Abuse by PayPower, Consumer Advocate, Consumer Alert, Consumer Rights Advocacy, Consumer Rights- consumers have no or few protections from predatory banking practices, Consumers act to protect themselves and others from further bank fraud and customer abuses, Consumers align to protect yourselves, Consumers are Vulnerable: Help each other, Consumers being forced to use plastic, Consumers Demand Bank Reforms That Serve Their Real Needs, Consumers Join Forces to Protect Each Other from Bank Scams and Frauds, Consumers must speak out, Consumers Need To Save Money And Stay Out of Debt, Consumers Start Talking and Learning Real Facts About Banking, Consumers suffer at the hands of METABANK, Creating Easy Preys Doesn't Make METABANK's Practices Moral, Customer Service isn't listed as being one of META FINANCIAL GROUP INC areas of interest or studied skills, Customers of METABANK continue to complain about how they have been mistreated by METABANK, Don't pay using a debit card, Don't use PREPAID BANK CARDS of any kind, Economic Servitude needs to be studied and abolished in the USA, Election reforms are needed in the USA, Fight Corruption, Financial Industry, Human Rights
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Posted by mrnd5 on December 9, 2013

https://mrnd5.wordpress.com/2013/12/09/consumer-financial-protection-bureau-is-under-attack-by-the-rich-banks-ceos-you-must-act-to-protect-consumers-everywhere/

How METABANK ruins the lives of their customers on so many levels… a scientific study to be applied to the way METABANK treats their customers

Killer Stress: A National Geographic Special   

Below you will find the transcript of this National Geographic Special that explains how stress is a killer.

Being a customer os METABANK is stressful. We established this blog to alert others and to allow them to protect themselves.

What many former customers of METABANK have found is that METABANK scammed them and then lied to the customer, and attempted to push the blame for the problem back off onto the customer. Customer after customer has reported that METABANK took control of their money using misleading promises that a prepaid bankcard would be safer and more secure. The prepaid bankcard gives all control of a customer’s money over to METABANK; the prepaid cards bring in lots of money for METABANK. The prepaid bank cards are safer and more secure for METABANK, but not for METABANK customers.

METABANK CEOs make in the range of $700,000.00 annually. METABANK brags that they got started as a “thrift bank” that is as a bank who sought “to serve” the underbanked” and “un-banked” in our society. This meant that METABANK seeks to establish a relationship with their customer base that would allow METABANK CEOs to be the “Alpha” primate while their customer base in general is in a subservient position. METABANK lures in partner companies and customer using false promises; this is a form of aggression against their customer base because of the way that METABANK has designed a product that repeatedly fails to meet customer’s needs.

I was struck by the fact that METABANK was so ready to lie to me about why I couldn’t access my own money and that they worked hardest at trying to push the blame for the problem off onto me as their customer. Of course, online, I would learn that METABANK by design fails customers; this is what makes METABANK’s CEOs so rich.

Those who are abused by METABANK and any system that operates in a similar manner would be well advised not to do business with METABANK. It turns out that there are health consequences for any and all METABANK customers. Please read the following transcript:

Created by PBS2

Aired at 11:00 PM on Monday, Apr 12, 2010 (4/12/2010)

Transcript

00:00:02

Saplosky: Chronic stress could do something as unsubtle and grotesque as kill some of your brain cells.

00:00:08

Narrator: The impact of stress can be found deep within us, shrinking our brains, adding fat to our bellies, even unraveling our chromosomes.

00:00:19

Blackburn: This is real.

00:00:20

This is not just somebody whining.

00:00:22

[Baboon shrieking] Narrator: Stress– savior, tyrant, plague– its portrait revealed.

00:01:01

This program was made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you.

00:01:08

Thank you.

00:01:11

Narrator: All of us have a personal relationship with stress.

00:01:15

But few of us know how it operates within us or understand how the onslaught of the modern world can stress us to the point of death.

00:01:30

Fewer still know what we can do about it.

00:01:42

But over the last three decades, stanford university neurobiologist robert sapolsky has been advancing our understanding of stress– how it impacts our bodies and how our social standing can make us more or less susceptible.

00:02:00

Most of the time you can find him teaching and researching in the high achieving, high stressed world of brain science.

00:02:13

But that’s only part of his story.

00:02:15

For a few weeks every year or so, sapolsky shifts his lab to a place more than 9,000 miles away, on the plains of the masai mara reserve in kenya, east africa.

00:02:37

Robert sapolsky first came to africa over 30 years ago on a hunch.

00:02:42

He suspected he could find out more about humans, stress and disease by looking at non-humans.

00:02:50

And he knew just the non-humans.

00:02:54

Sapolsky: You live in a place like this, you’re a baboon, and you only have to spend about three hours a day getting your calories.

00:03:00

And if you only have to work three hours a day, you’ve got nine hours of free time every day to devote to making somebody else just miserable.

00:03:10

[Baboons shrieking] they’re not being stressed by lions chasing them all the time, they’re being stressed by each other.

00:03:18

They’re being stressed by social and psychological tumult invented by their own species.

00:03:24

They’re a perfect model for westernized stress-related disease.

00:03:28

Narrator: To determine just what toll stress was taking on their bodies, sapolsky wanted to look inside these wild baboons– at the cellular level for the very first time.

00:03:39

..

00:03:42

In the most unassuming way.

00:03:46

Sapolsky: Basically is what you’re trying to do is anesthetize a baboon without him knowing it’s coming because you don’t want to have any of this anticipatory stress, so you can’t just, you know, get in your jeep and chase the baboon up and down the field for three hours, and finally, when he’s winded, dart him with an anesthetic.

00:04:07

The big advantages of a blow gun are that it’s pretty much silent and hasn’t a whole lot in the way of moving parts.

00:04:16

But the big drawback is it doesn’t go very far.

00:04:22

So what you spend just a bizarre amount of time doing is trying to figure out how to look nonchalant around a baboon.

00:04:32

[Blows] got him.

00:04:34

Time?

00:04:36

Ok, he is wobbling now.

00:04:38

Whoop, there he goes.

00:04:41

Narrator: From each baboon blood sample, robert measured levels of hormones central to the stress response.

00:04:48

Sapolsky: Well, to make sense of what’s happening in your body, you’ve got these two hormones that are the work horses of the whole stress response.

00:04:55

One of them we all know, adrenaline.

00:04:58

American version, epinephrine.

00:05:00

The other is a less known hormone called glucocorticoids.

00:05:04

It comes out of the adrenal gland along with adrenaline.

00:05:07

And these are the two backbones of the stress response.

00:05:11

Narrator: That stress response and those two hormones are critical to our survival.

00:05:19

Sapolsky: Because what stress is about is somebody is very intent on eating you or you are very intent on eating somebody and there’s immediate crisis going on.

00:05:30

Narrator: When you run for your life, basics are all that matter.

00:05:34

Lungs work overtime to pump mammoth quantities of oxygen into the bloodstream.

00:05:40

The heart races to pump that oxygen throughout the body so muscles respond instantly.

00:05:48

Sapolsky: You need your blood pressure up to deliver that energy.

00:05:51

You need to turn off anything that’s not essential.

00:05:54

..

00:05:56

You know, you’re running for your life.

00:05:57

This is no time to ovulate.

00:05:59

Tissue repair, all that sort of thing.

00:06:01

Do it later if there is a later.

00:06:03

Narrator: When the zebra escapes, its stress response shuts down.

00:06:08

But human beings can’t seem to find their “off” switch.

00:06:13

Sapolsky: We turn on the exact same stress response for purely psychological states.

00:06:17

Thinking about the ozone layer, the taxes coming up, mortality, 30-year mortgages, we turn on the same stress response and the key difference there is we’re not doing it for a real physiological reason and we’re doing it non-stop.

00:06:34

Narrator: By not turning off the stress response when reacting to life’s traffic jams, we wallow in a corrosive bath of hormones.

00:06:43

Even though it’s not life or death, we hyperventilate.

00:06:48

Our hearts pound.

00:06:50

Muscles tense.

00:06:52

Sapolsky: Ironically, after a while, the stress response is more damaging than the stressor itself, because the stressor is some psychological nonsense that you’re falling for.

00:07:01

No zebra on earth, running for its life, would understand why fear of speaking in public would cause you to secrete the same hormones that it’s doing at that point to save its life.

00:07:15

Narrator: Stress is the body’s way of rising to a challenge, whether the challenge is life-threatening, trivial or fun.

00:07:24

Sapolsky: You get the right amount of stress and we call it stimulation.

00:07:28

The goal in life isn’t to get rid of stress.

00:07:30

The goal in life is to have the right type of stress because when it’s the right type, we love it.

00:07:35

[People screaming] we jump out of our seats to experience it, we pay good money to get stressed that way.

00:07:44

It tends to be a moderate stressor, where you’ve got a stressor that’s transient.

00:07:50

It’s not for nothing roller coaster rides are not three weeks long.

00:07:52

And most of all what they’re about is you relinquish a little bit of control in a setting that overall feels safe.

00:08:03

Narrator: But, in real life, for so many of us primates, including robert’s baboons, control is not an option.

00:08:18

Sapolsky: You get some big male who loses a fight, and chases a sub-adult, who bites an adult female, who slaps a juvenile, who knocks an infant out of a tree all in 15 seconds.

00:08:32

Insofar as a huge component of stress is lack of control, lack of predictability, you’re sitting there and you’re just watching the zebra and somebody else is having a bad day and it’s your rear end that’s going to get slashed.

00:08:47

So tremendously psychologically stressful for the folks further down on the hierarchy.

00:08:54

Narrator: One of robert’s early revelations was identifying the link between stress and hierarchy in baboons.

00:09:03

Some baboon troops are over 100 strong.

00:09:07

Like us, they have evolved large brains to navigate the complexities of large societies.

00:09:13

Survival here requires a kind of political savvy– with the most cunning and aggressive males gaining top rank and all the perks– females for the choosing, all the food they can eat, and an endless retinue of willing groomers.

00:09:33

Every male knows where he stands in society– who can torture him; who he can torture; and who, in turn, the torturee can torture.

00:09:46

Sapolsky: Well, this sounds like a terrible thing to confess after 30 years, but I don’t actually like baboons all that much.

00:09:52

I mean, there’s been individual guys over the years who I absolutely love, but they’re these scheming, back-stabbing machiavellian bastards.

00:10:01

They’re awful to each other, so they’re great for my science.

00:10:05

I mean, I’m not out here to commune with them.

00:10:07

They’re perfect for what I study.

00:10:09

Narrator: 22 Years ago at the age of 30 robert sapolsky’s landmark research earned him the MacArthur foundation’s genius fellowship.

00:10:21

His early work– measuring stress hormones from extracted blood– led to two remarkable discoveries.

00:10:29

A baboon’s rank determined the level of stress hormone in his system.

00:10:37

So, if you’re a dominant male, you can expect your stress hormones to be low.

00:10:43

And if you’re submissive, much higher.

00:10:49

But there was an even more astonishing find in sapolsky’s sample: Low rankers–the have-nots– had increased heart rates and higher blood pressure.

00:10:58

This was the first time anyone had linked stress to the deteriorating health of a primate in the wild.

00:11:05

Sapolsky: Basically, if you’re, you know, a stressed, unhealthy baboon in a typical troop, high blood pressure, elevated levels of stress hormones, you have an immune system that doesn’t work as well, your reproductive system is more vulnerable of being knocked out of whack.

00:11:20

Your brain chemistry is one that bears some similarity to what you see in clinically depressed humans.

00:11:27

And all that stuff, those are not predictors of a hale and hearty old age.

00:11:37

Narrator: Could this also be true for that other primate?

00:11:41

As robert sapolsky was monitoring stress in baboons, professor sir michael marmot was leading a study in great britain that tracked the health of more than 28,000 people over the course of 40 years.

00:11:57

It was named for whitehall, citadel of the british civil service, where every job is ranked in a precise hierarchy– the perfect laboratory to determine whether in humans there might be a link between rank and stress.

00:12:14

Man: I mean, that’s the thing about stress.

00:12:16

I think you’ve got to look at it in both acute terms and chronic terms.

00:12:18

And I think I’ve been under chronic stress in this organization simply because I’m a square peg in a round hole.

00:12:25

Narrator: Kevin brooks is a government lawyer.

00:12:30

His rank–level seven– means he has little seniority in his department.

00:12:34

He lives the life of a subordinate.

00:12:38

Brooks: I think what I was most aware of at the time was the workload and how I had most of it under control, but one of my cases wasn’t wholly under control, I’d let it slip, and it was a bit like, you know, being in a car and hitting an ice patch and skidding.

00:12:55

But nonetheless I came in monday morning, and my immediate manager, let’s call him ben– ben wants a word with you.

00:13:03

So we find a room, he shuts the door, then he says, you know what you’ve done, you know what happened while you were away?

00:13:09

We couldn’t find one of your files.

00:13:12

Do you know what that meant?

00:13:13

He just gave me a darn good kicking, you know?

00:13:16

Psychologically, he did me over.

00:13:18

And at the end of it, it was more threats, it was, right, this may be a disciplinary matter.

00:13:22

So I left the room, crossed over the corridor to my own room, and I just burst into tears.

00:13:29

..and wept.

00:13:35

Narrator: Sarah woodhall also works for the government.

00:13:39

Unlike kevin, she is a senior civil servant.

00:13:42

Woodhall: There are about 160 people reporting to me ultimately one way or another within the sector.

00:13:49

I do really enjoy working in civil service.

00:13:52

It’s quite a dynamic environment, it can be quite exciting.

00:13:58

I like working with lots of people, so, yeah, I do really enjoy my job.

00:14:04

Narrator: Such dramatically different reflections dramatize one of the most astounding scientific findings in the whitehall study.

00:14:12

Marmot: Firstly, it showed that the lower you were in the hierarchy, the higher your risk of heart disease and other diseases.

00:14:20

So people second from the top had higher risks than those at the top, people third from the top had a higher risk than those second from the top, and it ran all the way from top to bottom.

00:14:32

We’re dealing with people in stable jobs with no industrial exposures.

00:14:36

And yet your position in the hierarchy intimately related to your risk of disease and length of life.

00:14:44

Woodhall: I’ve been very lucky.

00:14:45

I haven’t ever experienced any problems with my health.

00:14:49

Since I’ve been in the senior civil service I haven’t had a day off with ill health.

00:14:54

So I’ve been very fortunate.

00:14:57

Brooks: In my own situation, I think that my career is pretty much tainted.

00:15:03

It’s pretty much arrested.

00:15:05

Because I’ve had– for instance, out of the last three years at work, I’ve been off sick for probably half that time.

00:15:12

Sapolsky: This particular study is sort of the rosetta stone of the whole field, because it’s the british civil service system.

00:15:18

Everybody’s got the same medical care, everybody’s got the same universal health care system, just like the baboons.

00:15:24

All the baboons eat the same thing, they have the same level of activity.

00:15:27

It’s not this stuff that, oh, if you’re a low-ranking baboon, you smoke too much and you drink too much.

00:15:32

And if you’re a low rank in the british civil service you never go to the doctor, you don’t get preventive vaccines.

00:15:38

Both of these studies rule out all those confounds, and they produce virtually identical findings.

00:15:44

Narrator: On both sides of the primate divide, there are soul-wrenching stories and life-threatening consequences.

00:15:52

For every subordinate, like kevin, living a life of baboon uncertainty, there is an alpha strutting his stuff, glorying in power– over someone else, someone unsuspecting, someone low-ranking.

00:16:17

[Blows] Sapolsky: Got him.

00:16:21

12:46.

00:16:23

Sapolsky: Do either of you see where the dart is?

00:16:26

Girl: Yeah, I do.

00:16:27

Sapolsky: Ok, guys, who do you think’s higher ranking?

00:16:30

Boy: Our guy.

00:16:31

Sapolsky: Yeah.

00:16:36

Watch carefully, make sure the other guy doesn’t hassle him.

00:16:40

Narrator: This year, robert brought his family to africa.

00:16:43

His wife, neuropsychologist lisa share-sapolsky, has also done extensive research with baboons.

00:16:51

And for the first time, they brought along their kids, benjamin and rachel.

00:17:05

Sapolsky: All the baboons are perfectly willing to get very freaked out by a human coming over and touching one of these guys.

00:17:12

But cover him with the burlap and he doesn’t exist anymore.

00:17:17

Oh, my god– he’s there, he’s there– oop, not there anymore!

00:17:24

Sapolsky: This is not quite like take your kids to work day.

00:17:26

But this is a pretty central feature of who I am by now, and who my wife and I are, and if our kids want to know where we came from, this is pretty fundamental.

00:17:41

Narrator: As in previous seasons robert measures how individuals at every level of the baboon hierarchy react to and recover from stress.

00:17:51

Sapolsky: So what we’re doing, we’re now going to challenge the system with increasing doses of epinephrine.

00:18:02

Narrator: The baboon’s response is immediately picked up in its blood– vital signs that can be deep frozen in perpetuity.

00:18:13

Sapolsky: It’s this storehouse of potential knowledge, and I got 30 years of those blood samples frozen away at this point because you never know when some new hormone or some new something or other pops up.

00:18:25

And that’s the thing to look at and start pulling out those samples back to when, you know, jimmy carter was president.

00:18:32

..125.

00:18:34

Narrator: Anticipating the long reach of stress is a recent idea, for when robert was rachel’s age, scientists believed stress was the cause of only one major problem.

00:18:47

Film narrator: This is a picture of a major american personnel problem– an ugly sore that doctors call a peptic ulcer, eating away at the wall of a man’s stomach.

00:18:59

[Dramatic music playing] those stomach pains that you talk about– the gnawing, the burning– those are obvious symptoms of gastric ulcers.

00:19:10

Sapolsky: 30 Years ago what’s the disease that comes to everybody’s mind when you mention stress?

00:19:14

stress and ulcers, stress and ulcers.

00:19:18

This was the first stress-related disease discovered, in fact, 70 years ago.

00:19:22

What I want you to do is to work on your attitude.

00:19:26

My attitude?

00:19:27

That’s right.

00:19:28

Ulcers breed on the wrong kind of feelings.

00:19:30

You’ve got to be honest with yourself about the way you feel about things.

00:19:33

Finding a new doctor sounds like a better answer to me.

00:19:38

Narrator: The connection between stress and ulcers was mainstream medical gospel until the late 1980s.

00:19:45

Then australian researchers identified a bacteria as the major cause of ulcers.

00:19:51

Sapolsky: And this overthrew the entire field.

00:19:54

This was it’s got nothing to do with stress.

00:19:57

It’s a bacterial disorder.

00:19:59

And I’m willing to bet half the gastroenterologists on earth, when they heard about this, went out and celebrated that night.

00:20:04

This was like the greatest news.

00:20:05

Never again were they going to have to sit down their patients and make eye contact and ask them how’s it going, so anything stressful?

00:20:14

It’s got nothing to do with stress, it’s a bacterial disorder.

00:20:16

Narrator: So no longer would the solution be stress management.

00:20:19

Now it could be something as simple as a pill.

00:20:24

It was a major breakthrough.

00:20:27

Stress didn’t cause ulcers.

00:20:31

Case closed.

00:20:34

But a few years later the research took a new twist.

00:20:40

Scientists discovered that this ulcer-causing bacteria wasn’t unique.

00:20:45

In fact, as much as two thirds of the world’s population has it.

00:20:50

So why do only a fraction of these people develop ulcers?

00:20:55

Research revealed that when stressed the body begins shutting down all non-essential systems, including the immune system.

00:21:04

And it became clear that if you shut down the immune system, stomach bacteria can run amok.

00:21:11

Sapolsky: Because what the stress does is wipe out the ability of your body to begin to repair your stomach walls when they start rotting away from this bacteria.

00:21:21

Narrator: So stress can cause ulcers– by disrupting our body’s ability to heal itself.

00:21:29

If stress can undermine the immune system, what other havoc can it wreak?

00:21:35

One answer comes from a colony of captive macaque monkeys near winston-salem, north carolina.

00:21:43

Shively: People think of stress as something that keeps them up at night or something that makes them yell at their kids.

00:21:49

But when you ask me what is stress, I say, “look at it, it’s this huge plaque in this artery, ” Narrator: carol shively has been studying the arteries of macaques.

00:22:06

Like baboons and british civil servants, these primates organize themselves into distinctly hierarchical groups and subject each other to social stress.

00:22:20

Stress hormones can trigger an intense negative cardiovascular response– a pounding heart and increased blood pressure.

00:22:29

So if stress follows rank, would the cardiovascular system of a high-ranking macaque– call him a primate ceo– be different from his subordinate?

00:22:43

When shively looked at the arteries of a dominant monkey– one with little history of stress– its arteries were clean.

00:22:51

But a subordinate monkey’s arteries told a grim tale.

00:22:56

Shively: A subordinate artery has lots more atherosclerosis built up inside it than a dominant artery has.

00:23:04

Narrator: Stress and the resulting flood of hormones had increased blood pressure, damaging artery walls, making them repositories for plaque.

00:23:15

Shively: So now when you feel threatened, your arteries don’t expand and your heart muscle doesn’t get more blood and that can lead to a heart attack.

00:23:26

This is not an abstract concept, it’s not something that maybe someday you should do something about.

00:23:31

You need to attend to it today because it’s affecting the way your body functions, and stress today will affect your health tomorrow and for years to come.

00:23:43

Narrator: Social and psychological stress– whether macaque, human or baboon– can clog our arteries, restrict blood flow, jeopardize the health of our heart.

00:23:55

And that’s just the beginning of stress’ deadly curse.

00:24:05

Robert’s early research demonstrated that stress works on us in an even more frightening way.

00:24:12

Sapolsky: Well, back when I was starting in this business, what I wound up focusing on was what seemed an utterly implausible idea at the time, which was chronic stress and chronic exposure to glucocorticoids could do something as unsubtle and grotesque as kill some of your brain cells.

00:24:33

Narrator: As a phd candidate at rockefeller university IN THE EARLY 1980s, Sapolsky collaborated with his mentor, dr.

00:24:39

bruce McEwen, to follow the path of stress into the brain.

00:24:48

They subjected lab rats to chronic stress and then examined their brain cells.

00:24:54

The team made an astonishing find: They found that while the cells of normal rat brains have extensive branches, stressed rats’ brain cells were dramatically smaller.

00:25:07

Sapolsky: And what was most interesting in many ways was the part of the brain where this was happening, hippocampus.

00:25:14

You take intro neurobiology any time for the last 5,000 years, and what you learn is hippocampus is learning and memory.

00:25:22

Narrator: Stress in these rats shrank the part of their brain responsible for memory.

00:25:28

McEwen: Stress affects memory in two ways.

00:25:30

Chronic stress can actually change brain circuits so that we lose the capacity to remember things as we need to.

00:25:41

Very severe, acute stress can have another effect which is often we refer to as “stress makes you stupid,” which is making it impossible for you, over short periods of time, to remember things you know perfectly well.

00:25:57

Sapolsky: We all know that phenomenon, we all know that one from back when we stressed ourselves by not getting any sleep at all, 00 we couldn’t remember a single thing for that final exam.

00:26:09

You take a human and stress them big time, long time, and you’re going to have a hippocampus that pays the price as well.

00:26:16

Narrator: So, in addition to undermining our health, stress can make us feel plain miserable.

00:26:22

Carol shively set out to find out why.

00:26:26

She began not with misery but with pleasure.

00:26:30

Shively suspected that there was a link between stress, pleasure, and where we stand on the social hierarchy.

00:26:37

Just like stress, pleasure is linked to the chemistry of the brain.

00:26:43

When a neurotransmitter called dopamine is released in the brain, it binds to receptors, signaling pleasure.

00:26:53

scanner to explore this process first by looking into the brain of a non-stressed primate, ” Shively: What we see is that the brains of dominant monkeys light up bright with lots of dopamine binding in this area that’s so important to reward and feeling pleasure about life.

00:27:14

Narrator: Shively then looked at the subordinate’s brain.

00:27:18

Shively: What we discovered is that the brains of the subordinate monkeys are very, very dull because there’s much less receptor binding going on in this area.

00:27:29

Why is that?

00:27:30

What is it about this area of the brain?

00:27:33

When you have less dopamine, everything around you that you would normally take pleasure in is less pleasurable, so the sun doesn’t shine so bright, the grass is not so green, food doesn’t taste as good.

00:27:45

It’s because of the way your brain is functioning that you’re doing that, and your brain is functioning that way because you’re low on the social status hierarchy.

00:27:53

Sapolsky: One feature of low rank is being low-ranking, the reality.

00:27:56

An even stronger feature, by the time you get to humans, is not just being low ranking or poor, it’s feeling low ranking or poor.

00:28:04

And one of the best ways for society to make you feel like one of the have-nots is to rub your nose over and over and over again with what you don’t have.

00:28:14

Narrator: Richmond, california– a town where society’s extremes can be spotted right from your car.

00:28:20

This is cardiologist jeffrey ritterman’s regular commute.

00:28:25

Ritterman: You can learn a lot about the stress and health outcome just from the neighborhoods you visit.

00:28:31

In this neighborhood, the life expectancy is quite good and most of the people are pretty healthy.

00:28:38

And as we reach the top of the hill, it gets to be a little bit less privileged.

00:28:45

And as we make this transition, the social status begins to drop, and correspondingly, in those areas, the health outcome is much worse.

00:28:57

And these people are not going to have the same life expectancy as the people in the middle class area we started in.

00:29:08

People are on guard, people are vigilant, they’re living a more stressful life.

00:29:14

This is a community that produces high stress hormones in people, and over time it takes its toll.

00:29:21

Narrator: ritterman’s patients is 65-year-old emanuel johnson.

00:29:27

guidance counselor in one of america’s most dangerous neighborhoods.

00:29:32

Johnson: Last year I think we had 47 homicides, you know.

00:29:36

In the last 4 days, we had 11 shootings, 3 deaths.

00:29:41

And I just know, nine times out of ten, it’s going to be a relative or someone that the kids know.

00:29:48

Narrator: For emanuel johnson, there is a price for chronic exposure to this stress.

00:29:54

Johnson: Five years ago I had a heart attack.

00:29:56

I’m a diabetic, too.

00:29:58

I have to work on it constantly.

00:29:59

I’ve been in this business 20 years.

00:30:01

So it’s just–it’s stressful just working the job, so over the years, you know, the cholesterol, the blood pressure, the sugar came on later, but the stress was always there, long before they came on.

00:30:15

Narrator: Emanuel johnson’s body may be telling yet another story of stress.

00:30:20

The whitehall study in england found an incredible link between stress, your position in the social hierarchy and how you put on weight.

00:30:30

Marmot: So it may not be just putting on weight, but also the distribution of that weight.

00:30:36

And the distribution of that weight– putting it on round the center– is related to position in the hierarchy, and that in turn may be related to chronic stress pathways.

00:30:48

Shively: So we said, does that happen in monkeys because they organize themselves in a hierarchy, too.

00:30:55

And it turns out that it does.

00:30:58

Subordinate monkeys are more likely to have fat in their abdomen than are dominant monkeys.

00:31:05

I think the most amazing observation that I’ve made in my lab is this idea that stress could actually change the way you deposit fat on your body.

00:31:19

To me, that was a bizarre idea that you could actually alter the way fat is distributed.

00:31:27

Narrator: Sapolsky, shively and others think stress could be a critical factor in the global obesity epidemic.

00:31:35

Even worse, fat brought on by stress is dangerous fat.

00:31:41

Shively: We know that fat carried on the trunk or actually inside the abdomen is much worse for you than fat carried elsewhere on the body.

00:31:50

It behaves differently, it’s– it is, um, it produces different kinds of hormones and chemicals and has different effects on your health.

00:32:00

Whatever it is that works for an individual, they need to value stress reduction.

00:32:07

I think the problem in our society is that we don’t value stress reduction, we, in fact, value the opposite.

00:32:13

We admire the person who not only multitasks and does two things at once, but does five things at once.

00:32:19

We kind of admire that person, how they manage that, you know, well, that’s–it’s– that’s an incredibly stressful way to live.

00:32:27

We have to change our values and value people who understand a balanced and serene life.

00:32:39

Narrator: One heartbreaking moment in history reveals that stress may, in fact, damage us long before we are even aware.

00:32:52

Holland, late 1944.

00:32:55

A brutal winter and a merciless army of occupation conspire to starve a nation.

00:33:02

It is known as the dutch hunger winter.

00:33:04

For those who survive today, these are haunting memories.

00:33:10

[Speaking dutch] Narrator: Dutch researcher tessa roseboom had heard many of those tragic memories.

00:33:43

She and her team wanted to know if there were any lingering effects.

00:33:49

Roseboom knew that our bodies respond to famine in much the same way they respond to other stressors, so she set out to see if the fetuses of women pregnant during these arduous days could possibly be affected by stress.

00:34:06

Because of meticulous record keeping by the dutch, roseboom was able to identify over 2,400 people who could have been impacted.

00:34:17

She and her team analyzed the data from those born during and after the famine and came to a surprising conclusion.

00:34:27

Roseboom: I think that you could say that these babies were exposed to stress in fetal life and they are still suffering the consequences of that now, 60 years later.

00:34:41

Narrator: Most of the dutch hunger winter children live today, all in their sixties.

00:34:47

Many still bear the scars of war.

00:34:51

Roseboom: We found that babies who were conceived during the famine have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease.

00:34:57

They have more hypercholesterolemia, they are more responsive to stress and they generally are in poorer health than people who were born before the famine or conceived after it.

00:35:11

Narrator: Researchers think that stress hormones in a mother’s blood triggered a change in the nervous system of the fetus as it struggled with starvation.

00:35:21

This was the fetus’ first encounter with stress.

00:35:26

Six decades later, the bodies of these dutch hunger winter children still haven’t forgotten.

00:35:33

Sapolsky: What we now know is it’s not just your fat cell storage that winds up being vulnerable to events like this.

00:35:40

It’s your brain chemistry.

00:35:41

It’s your capacity to learn as an adult.

00:35:44

It’s your capacity to respond to stress adaptively rather than maladaptively.

00:35:49

How readily you fall into depression, how vulnerable you are to psychiatric disorders– yet another realm in which early experience and early stress can leave a very bad footprint.

00:36:02

Woman: If I had had an option, I would not have opted to be bipolar, but now that I am bipolar, I’ll have to live with it.

00:36:11

[Speaking dutch] Sapolsky: What the dutch hunger winter phenomenon is about is experience, environment starts long before birth.

00:36:27

An adverse, stressful environment can leave imprints, can leave scars lasting a whole lifetime.

00:36:55

Rachel: We’re just taking fingerprints ’cause no baboon has the same fingerprint as another one.

00:37:01

So we just took honey bear’s, and I’m hoping to go over to riff and get his.

00:37:06

Narrator: During this year’s multi-generational research, robert, who has spent his career documenting stress’ effects on the individual and on the cell, tracks the trail of stress even deeper into our bodies.

00:37:21

Sapolsky: One of the most interesting new directions of stress research is taking the effects of stress down to a nuts and bolts level of how cells work, how genes work that half a dozen years ago, nobody could have imagined.

00:37:35

Narrator: The once unimaginable– genetic structures called telomeres, which protect the ends of our chromosomes from fraying.

00:37:44

As we age, our telomeres shorten.

00:37:47

Sapolsky: What’s interesting is stress, by way of stress hormones, can accelerate the shortening of telomeres.

00:37:55

So the assumption is for the exact same aged guys, if you’re a low-ranking guy who’s just marinating in stress hormones, your telomeres are going to be shorter.

00:38:04

Narrator: So how does this formidable finding apply to us?

00:38:10

San rafael, california.

00:38:12

Once a week janet lawson keeps a very important appointment.

00:38:17

She joins other mothers who share circumstances that produce chronic, unremitting stress.

00:38:23

Woman: But she loses her balance, and that’s the scary part.

00:38:26

So we just went out, actually last night, and bought a new helmet, storun Woman: We found that as she’s getting older and wanting more independence, it’s getting harder.

00:38:33

Narrator: Each of these women is mother to a disabled child.

00:38:37

Woman: As my son’s only 8 and there’s enough I can handle and I don’t allow myself to go too much out, I can’t.

00:38:43

Woman: I had a friend recently who said to me, you know, I think you really should consider putting lexie in a home.

00:38:49

And that was really stressful in and of itself ..

00:38:56

..sorry.

00:38:58

Don’t be sorry, hon.

00:39:00

So I was like, wow, how can you even say that?

00:39:03

She’s, you know, a little girlfriend.

00:39:06

She’s, um, even though she can’t really communicate, ..

00:39:14

She loves. she loves.

00:39:19

Narrator: These remarkable women came to the attention of biologist dr. elizabeth blackburn.

00:39:25

Blackburn: I don’t directly know the individuals, but I know the stories.

00:39:30

I’m a mother myself.

00:39:31

And so when I heard about this cohort, I really thought it was worthwhile finding out what really is happening at the heart of the cells in these mothers who are doing such a difficult thing for such a long time.

00:39:46

Narrator: blackburn is a leader in the field of telomere research.

00:39:51

Blackburn: We have 46 chromosomes and they’re capped off at each end by telomeres.

00:39:57

Nobody knew in humans whether telomeres and their fraying down over life would be affected by chronic stress.

00:40:04

And so we decided we would look at this cohort of chronically stressed mothers, and we decided to ask what’s happening to their telomeres and to the maintenance of their telomeres.

00:40:17

What we found was the length of the telomeres directly relates to the amount of stress somebody is under and the number of years that they’ve been under the stress.

00:40:28

Narrator: Such stressed mothers became the focus of a study blackburn’s colleague, psychologist elissa eppel.

00:40:36

Eppel: Mothers of young children are a highly stressed group.

00:40:41

They’re often balancing competing demands like work and child rearing and often don’t have time to take care of themselves.

00:40:49

So if you add on top of that the extra burden of caring for a child with special needs, it can be overwhelming.

00:40:56

It can tax the very reserves that sustain people, and if they’re stressed, if they report stress, they tend to die earlier.

00:41:05

Sapolsky: These women have shortened telomeres– decreased activity of this enzyme, and very, very rough number– for every year you were taking care of a chronically ill child, you got roughly six years’ worth of aging.

00:41:18

Blackburn: This is real.

00:41:19

This is not just somebody whining.

00:41:21

This is real medically serious aging going on, and we can see that it’s actually caused by the chronic stress.

00:41:33

Narrator: But there is hope.

00:41:34

blackburn co-discovered an enzyme, telomerase, that can repair the damage.

00:41:41

Woman: It’s what I always call the threat of hope.

00:41:45

[Laughter] Narrator: Preliminary data suggests that a meeting of minds such as this may actually have a health benefit, by stimulating the healing effects of telomerase.

00:41:58

Woman: If you don’t laugh, forget it, you can’t handle it.

00:42:03

Woman:..

00:42:06

There’s a certain level of black humor that we have about our kids that only we appreciate, we are the only ones who get the jokes, in a way we’re the only ones ..

00:42:17

Eppel: One of the questions in the stress field is what are the active ingredients that reduce stress and that promote longevity?

00:42:27

And compassion and caring for others may be one of those most important ingredients.

00:42:34

So those may be the factors that promote longevity and increase telomerase and keep our cells rejuvenating and regenerating.

00:42:44

Narrator: So perhaps connecting with and helping others can help us to mend ourselves and maybe even live longer, healthier lives.

00:42:54

20 Years ago sapolsky got a shocking preview of this idea.

00:43:01

The first troop he ever studied– the baboons he felt closest to and had written books about– suffered a calamity.

00:43:10

It would have a profound effect on his research.

00:43:14

Sapolsky: The keekorok troop is the one I started with 30 years ago.

00:43:19

And they were your basic old baboon troop at the time, which means males were aggressive and society was highly stratified, and females took a lot of grief, and your basic off-the-rack baboon troop.

00:43:32

And then about– by now almost 20 years ago, something horrific and scientifically very interesting happened to that troop.

00:43:41

Narrator: The keekorok troop took to foraging for food in the garbage dump of a popular tourist lodge.

00:43:49

It was a fatal move.

00:43:53

The trash included meat tainted with tuberculosis.

00:43:58

The result was that over half the males in the troop died.

00:44:04

Sapolsky: Not unreasonably, I got depressed as hell and pretty damn angry about what happened.

00:44:11

You know, you’re 30 years old, you can afford to expend a lot of emotion on a baboon troop, and there was a lot of emotion there.

00:44:19

Narrator: For robert, a decade of research appeared to have been lost.

00:44:25

But then he made a curious observation about who had died and who had survived.

00:44:32

Sapolsky: It wasn’t random who died.

00:44:34

In that troop, if you were aggressive and if you were not particularly socially connected, socially affiliative, you didn’t spend your time grooming and hanging out, if you were that kind of male, you died.

00:44:47

Narrator: Every alpha male was gone.

00:44:49

The keekorok troop had been transformed Sapolsky: And what you were left with was twice as many females as males, and the males who were remaining were, you know, just to use scientific jargon, they were good guys.

00:45:03

They were not aggressive jerks.

00:45:05

They were nice to the females.

00:45:06

They were very socially affiliative.

00:45:08

It completely transformed the atmosphere in the troop.

00:45:13

Narrator: When male baboons reach adolescence, they typically leave their home troop and roam, eventually finding a new troop.

00:45:22

Sapolsky: And when the new adolescent males would join the troop, they’d come in just as jerky as any adolescent males elsewhere on this planet, and it would take ’em about six months to learn, “we’re not like that in this troop.

00:45:34

We don’t do stuff like that.

00:45:36

We’re not that aggressive.

00:45:37

We spend more time grooming each other.

00:45:38

Males are calmer with each other.

00:45:40

You cannot dump on a female if you’re in ” and it takes these new guys about six months, and they assimilate this style.

00:45:48

And you have baboon culture, and this particular troop has a culture of very low levels of aggression and high levels of social affiliation, and they’re doing that 20 years later.

00:46:00

Narrator: And so the tragedy had provided robert with a fundamental lesson– not just about cells, but how the absence of stress could impact society.

00:46:11

Sapolsky: Do these guys have the same problems with high blood pressure? nope.

00:46:14

Do these guys have the same problems with brain chemistry related to anxiety, stress hormone levels?

00:46:20

Not at all.

00:46:21

It’s not just your rank, it’s what your rank means in your society.

00:46:26

Narrator: And the same is true for humans, with only a slight variation.

00:46:30

Sapolsky: We belong to multiple hierarchies, and you may have the worst job in your corporation and no autonomy and control and predictability, but you’re the captain of the company softball team that year and you’d better bet you are going to have all sorts of psychological means to decide it’s just a job, nine to five, that’s not what the world is about.

00:46:49

What the world’s about is softball.

00:46:52

I’m the head of my team, people look up to me, and you come out of that deciding you are on top of the hierarchy that matters to you.

00:47:06

Sapolsky: Well, that worked.

00:47:09

And lots of baboon poop.

00:47:13

Which under the right circumstances with the right season’s experiment is a goldmine.

00:47:21

Unfortunately this time around it’s just a cage to have to clean now.

00:47:32

I’m studying stress for 30 years now, and I even tell people how they should live differently, so presumably I should incorporate all this and the reality is, like, I’m unbelievably stressed and type “a” and poorly coping, and why else would I study this stuff 80 hours a week?

00:47:50

No doubt everything I advise is going to lose all its credibility if I keel over dead from a heart attack IN MY EARLY 50s.

00:47:57

I’m not good at dealing with stress.

00:48:00

One thing that works to my advantage is I love my work, I love every aspect of it, so that’s good.

00:48:06

Nonetheless this is pretty clearly a different place than the savannah in east africa.

00:48:13

You can do science here that’s very different and more interesting in some ways.

00:48:18

You can have hot showers on a more regular basis.

00:48:21

It’s a more interesting, varied world in lots of ways.

00:48:25

But there’s a lot out there that you sure miss.

00:48:38

It is a pretty miraculous place, where every meal tastes good and you’re 10 times more aware of every sensation.

00:48:49

This is a hard place to come to year after year without getting, I think, a very different metabolism and temperament.

00:48:58

..

00:49:02

More happy.

00:49:04

This is a hard place not to be happy.

00:49:14

Narrator: So one antidote to stress may be finding a place where we have control.

00:49:20

But how do we reckon with all the time we spend at work?

00:49:23

Marmot: I would say what we’ve learned from the whitehall study and the study of the non-human primates is the conditions in which people live and work are absolutely vital for their health.

00:49:38

Narrator: Senior civil servant sarah woodhall enjoys the benefits of control.

00:49:44

Woodhall: I don’t think I suffer from stress.

00:49:47

I don’t work a hundred hours a week.

00:49:49

I control the amount of work that I do to make sure that I can continue to deliver long term.

00:49:57

Marmot: Control, the amount of control is intimately related to where you are in the occupational hierarchy.

00:50:05

And what we have found is in general when people report to us that things have got worse, that the amount of work stress has gone up, their illness rates go up.

00:50:16

When people report to us that they’ve got more control and they’re being treated more fairly at work and there’s more justice in their amount of treatment, so things are getting better, the amount of illness goes down.

00:50:30

Woodhall: I’ve been very lucky.

00:50:30

I haven’t ever experienced any problems with my health.

00:50:33

Narrator: But not everyone is so lucky.

00:50:36

So is there a prescription for the vast majority of us who aren’t at the top?

00:50:42

Marmot: Give people more involvement in the work, give them more say in what they’re doing, give them more reward for the amount of effort they put out, and it might well be you’ll have not just a healthier workplace, but a more productive workplace as well.

00:50:58

Brooks: I’ve managed to achieve a degree of control.

00:51:02

At the moment, I’m in a really good position.

00:51:05

This is the first time where I feel I’ve had a boss who appreciates me.

00:51:08

He doesn’t dominate team meetings, he sits back.

00:51:11

He invites people to contribute.

00:51:14

He lets other people chair.

00:51:15

He’s a real manager, and he– from the start, when I returned after my latest sick leave, just six months ago, he was so positive.

00:51:22

I think I feel sufficiently empowered.

00:51:28

Narrator: Who would have imagined that robert’s baboons, roaming the cruel plains of africa, would point us humans toward a stress-free utopia?

00:51:38

Marmot: This may sound a little fanciful, but I think what we’re trying to create is a better society.

00:51:47

The implications, both of the baboons and of the british civil servants, is how can we create a society that has the conditions that will allow people to flourish?

00:51:59

And that’s where this is heading– to create a better society that promotes human flourishing.

00:52:08

Sapolsky: So what do baboons teach the average person in there?

00:52:12

Don’t bite somebody because you’re having a bad day.

00:52:15

Don’t displace on them in any sort of matter.

00:52:18

Social affiliation is a remarkably powerful thing.

00:52:22

And that said by somebody who lives in a world where ambition and drive and type-“a”-ness and all of that sort of thing dominates.

00:52:30

Those things are real important and one of the greatest forms of sociality is giving rather than receiving, and all those things make for a better world.

00:52:44

Another one of the things that baboons teach us is if they’re able to, in one generation, transform what are supposed to be textbook social systems sort of engraved in stone, we don’t have an excuse when we say there’s certain inevitabilities about human social systems.

00:53:04

Narrator: And so the haunting question that endures from robert’s life work– are we brave enough to learn from a baboon?

00:53:15

The keekorok troop didn’t just survive without stress, they thrived.

00:53:23

Can we?

00:53:34

portrait of a killeron dvd call pbs home video at 1-800-play-pbs or visit us online at shoppbs.org.

00:54:34

This program was made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you.

00:54:41

Thank you.

00:54:46

We are pbs.

Word Map

baboons know right Shively live brain guys disease humans When Woman health baboon society blood This telomeresstressed rank Sapolsky work response people pretty stress came going life social long research firstgood time amount civil make Narrator later heart years stressful hormones hierarchy troop place chronic

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by mrnd5 on March 22, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Bank Publicity that is simply "Garbage Talk", Bank Reform and Proper Regulations are Needed, Bank Reform needed, Bank Regulations must be enforced, Bank regulators shut down MetaBank payday loans, Bank Regulatory Reforms are Needed, Banks Designed To Keep Consumers in Debt, Banks have created all the rules for PREPAID CARDS, Banks Lying to Consumers To Trick Them into taking on Debt, being manipulated, Big Corporations and Banks run the world, Blackhawk & METABANK to be avoided, Consumer Alert, Consumer Rights Advocacy, Consumers align to protect yourselves, Consumers being forced to use plastic, Consumers Demand Bank Reforms That Serve Their Real Needs, Consumers Join Forces to Protect Each Other from Bank Scams and Frauds, Consumers Need To Save Money And Stay Out of Debt, Corrupt Practices found within METABANK, Creating Easy Preys Doesn't Make METABANK's Practices Moral, Customer Complaints Abound Regarding how METABANK treats them., Customer Service isn't listed as being one of META FINANCIAL GROUP INC areas of interest or studied skills, Customers of METABANK continue to complain about how they have been mistreated by METABANK, Disabled Veteran abused by METABANK, Do not give up control of your own money by using a prepaid card, Does METABANK believe their customer base are unworthy?, Don't Invest in META BANK, Don't use PREPAID BANK CARDS of any kind, fast paced banking systems, fees related to gift cards, Fight Corruption, Get Debit dot com is Meta Bank, Gift Cards May be Suspended After Purchase and without notice, Higher One has agreements with 520 campuses that enroll more than 4.3 million students, Holiday Gift Cards: have hidden fees, information systems, Internal Audits not able to cope with problems related to prepaid bank cards, Jackson-Hewitt and METABANK are partners, Jackson-Hewitt tax preparation services to be avoided, Meta Bank and Banks like it are the source of the bad economy - stop talking about any politician at any point in history, META BANK bilks their customer base, Meta Bank charges customers for spending their own money, META BANK continues same scam into end of 2012, Meta Bank denied one man his right to a fair and impartial trial. What kind of a world citizen is Meta Bank? We are tired of fighting the wars that Meta Bank causes., META BANK doesn’t serve the general public, Meta Bank is nothing but a publicity scam, Meta Bank never accepts responsibility, Meta Bank operates using many different names, META BANK same poor service as always, META FINANCIAL GROUP INC, META FINANCIAL GROUP INC continues to scam customers through the end of 2012, METABANK as the alpha baboon in our society, METABANK CEOs make huge annual incomes, METABANK customers are still being scammed, METABANK donates large amounts of money to re-elect Steve King, METABANK is a collections agency and not a bank, METABANK uses both Pyramid and Ponzi Schemes, METABANK uses false awards- false testimonials, METABANK uses the rules for their own gain, METABANK's partner company provides METABANK with access to their customer base
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Posted by mrnd5 on March 22, 2013

https://mrnd5.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/how-metabank-ruins-the-lives-of-their-customers-on-so-many-levels-a-scientific-study-to-be-applied-to-the-way-metabank-treats-their-customers/

Jackson-Hewitt uses METABANK to give out tax refunds; METABANK customers are still complaining in 2013

Questions about metabank?

has anyone received their refund from this bank? and does anyone get anything other than your deposit is scheduled to be deposited on January 29? I also wanted to know if anyone knows of a phone number for them where you can actually speak to a person instead of a computer?
c

Additional Details

I just received an update from meta bank saying that my deposit was received from the irs and they will deposit as expected. Does this mean my money WILL be there tomorrow?
[ Will tomorrow ever come for METABANK customers?]

 

That number you gave is only for people that used Jackson Hewitt. The number they gave me was 800-717-7228, which of course is automated. Thanks though!!
[This is not a reasonable explanation. Why wasn’t that customer given a working phone number from the      start? ]
*******************************
This experience happened three years ago so in 2010.

However, Customers are still complaining about METABANK in January of 2013.

Customers feel alone when METABANK scams them and yet there are so many of us who have been scammed by METABANK. This is part of the design created by METABANK.
We wonder how it is that METABANK can keep abusing their customers as they do? They lied to us so they must be carrying this lie elsewhere.
Our guess is that METABANK may be describing their customers as intellectually inferior.
That of course isn’t the truth.
The problem is that METABANK created all the rules for their product and regulates how they operate.
At this time in our history, no one is really looking out for us as consumers.

What you need to know is that Jackson-Hewitt uses METABANK.

Our experience using METABANK was horrible.

So many others have also complained about not having access to their own money that is placed on the METABANK PREPAID CARD that we can’t recommend any service that uses the METABANK PREPAID CARDS.

What makes it really difficult is that METABANK has built up a huge war chest of funds to fight to be able to keep doing the very things that METABANk’s customers keep complaining about.

METABANK hires D.C. lobbyists to push for their myopic cause for their own personal financial gain.
Prepaid Bank Cards, in theory, may be ok, not great, but ok.
Our complaints all are related to the fact that once METABANK has control of our money, then METABANK begins to lie to us for why we can’t access our own money.
This is the nature of the on-going scam that METABANK does.
We have observed diversionary tactics in the practices being used by METABANK to be able to scam their customers.
These practices seem to have been ramped up and invigorated recently, but we aren’t sure why.
This may be nothing more than a big game for METABANK, but for those abused customers this is what “HELL” would be like in dealing with METABANK.
  • METABANK gets an interest free loan from those people who are least able to give loans.
  • METABANK charges outrageous interest rates to loans they may give to those people. What is fair in that kind of practice? Absolutely nothing!!!
  • METABANK is also using smokescreens as part of their lies.

 

We strongly suspect and there is every indication that METABANK is using smokescreens such as saying that they are trying to prevent fraudulent practices when it is METABANK themselves who are taking from the poor to make themselves even richer.

This is a cautionary message.

Please protect yourselves from METABANK and its partner companies.

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by mrnd5 on January 31, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Advocate for your needs and concerns as a consumer, Annual Income of META BANK's CEOs, Bank Publicity that is simply "Garbage Talk", Bank Reform and Proper Regulations are Needed, Bank Reform needed, Jackson-Hewitt and METABANK are partners, METABANK customers are still complaining about the abuse they have received from METABANK
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Posted by mrnd5 on January 31, 2013

https://mrnd5.wordpress.com/2013/01/31/jackson-hewitt-uses-metabank-to-give-out-tax-refunds-metabank-customers-are-still-complaining-in-2013/

Customers Matter for the Sustainable Success of all business entities

Over a period of years now, we have discovered numerous complaints about how METABANK treats their own customer base.

METABANK frequently enlists another corporate entity to market their cards for them.

Sometimes METABANK markets their PREPAID CARDS on line directly to consumers.

The customers complain that although METABANK advertises that by placing their cash money on one of METABANK’s PREPAID CARDS that their cash money will be safer and more secure than if they had paid in cash.

Over and over again, METABANK customers have complained that METABANK puts a lock on their account so they can not access their money in a timely way. METABANK’s practices put their customers in a position where they can’t pay their own bills in a timely manner.

METABANK feels entitled to prevent honest hardworking citizens from accessing their own money by instructing their customer representatives to use a list of lies which have been provided to those METABANK employees.

Among the lies, we have heard frequently mentioned that METABANK has perceived some fraudulent activity on the card. Customers indicate that they have only been shopping at all of their usual places.

One student because METABANK closed off his access to his own money, couldn’t pay his rent on-time.

A disabled American Veteran couldn’t access his own money and this put him in a serious financial situation.

METABANK HAS SHOWN OVER AND OVER AGAIN A COMPLETE LACK OF EMPATHY FOR THEIR CUSTOMERS AND THE FINANCIAL PROBLEMS THAT METABANK HAS CAUSED THEM.

METABANK’s product may have been targeted by MONEY MULES.

A money mule is a person who transfers stolen money or merchandise from one country to another, either in person, through a courier service, or electronically. The term is commonly used to describe on-line scams that prey on victims who are unaware that the money or merchandise they are transferring is stolen. In these scams, the stolen money or merchandise is transferred from the victim’s country to the scam operator’s country.

Online money mule scams typically exist as a result of other types of online fraud, such as phishing scams, malware scams or scams that operate around auction sites like eBay. After money or merchandise has been stolen using any of those methods, a scammer will employ a mule to relay the money or goods to the scammer. This process obscures the scammer’s true identity and location from the initial victim.[1] Money mules may be subject to criminal prosecution for their actions.

Money mules are commonly recruited with job advertisements for

        • “payment processing agents,”
        • “money transfer agents,”
        • “local processors,”
        • and other similar titles.

Some money mules are recruited by a scammer posing as an attractive member of the opposite sex.

Candidates are asked to accept payments and to remit most of the funds to a third party — a job which can be done from one’s own home. Legitimate companies use escrow services for this kind of work.[3] 

Scammers trading in stolen goods use similar tactics to recruit mules who receive packages and then forward them to mail drops in the scammer’s home country.

At one point METABANK advertised for customers to put their “Hard earned money” into one of METABANK’s Swiss Branches where it would be safe. To us as ordinary consumers, it appeared as if METABANK was actually courting those people who have earned their money in illegal ways. To our knowledge METABANK is still operating overseas branches around the world. The assassination in Dubai was perpetrated using fraudulently acquired prepaid bank cards. METABANK said that the buyers of those cards had used false ID’s and they didn’t know they were false IDs. Payoneer, the Israeli branch of METABANK that sold those 26 prepaid cards to people using false ids advertised that they had the best equipment in the world for detecting false IDs. The 26 false id purchases of PREPAID BANK CARDS turned out to have all been bought by Mossad operatives. https://www.fas.org/irp/world/israel/mossad/       They were all part of Israeli intelligence as their operatives. METABANK said they didn’t know that the prepaid bank cards were purchased using false ids and therefore METABANK had no idea that they would be used to assassinate one man. One man who never got a fair and impartial trial…. Do we think that his family and friends will just vanish? METABANK through the way they act in the world is in reality spurring on Al Queda…. To think otherwise, would be misleading.

METABANK sells fraudulent cards when it chooses, but keeps their own customers from being able to access their own cash money. To get a prepaid card, METABANK requires their customers to give them cash money, currency. METABANK doesn’t accept checks which would be traceable nor money orders which would be traceable.

METABANK keeps customers’ money when those customers need it the most

In this way, METABANK abuses their own customer base.

We find it difficult to believe that METABANK isn’t directly involved in covert and illegally inspired activities. How they handled the sale of the Dubai Assassins for the press was totally unacceptable… METABANK never takes responsibility for anything. Herein lies the problem for consumers.

METABANK set out to scam the underbanked, the unbanked. From its conception, METABANK has been horrible for ordinary honest people.

It appears that METABANK, itself may be much more closely involved with MONEY MULES and the laundering of money than they wish to admit.

Because METABANK withholds customers’ cash money from their customers when they need it the most, and charges customers for phoning them. Customers complain that they get nothing but a run around and no resolution to the problem they have brought to the attention of METABANK.

METABANK lied to me or METABANK is so incompetent that they have no idea what they are doing.

Customers/Consumers, those ordinary hard working people like you and me, are being scammed over and over again. Then once METABANK has full control of that customer’s money, METABANK lies to that customer just to get an interest free loan for themselves.

One customer couldn’t access the money on his prepaid travel card. He tried to phone the number on the back of the card, but never got anyone to answer. When he got back to the USA, he was told that he hadn’t used the card properly. I saw that no clerks would accept the METABANK PREPAID CARD. I have wondered if those European companies had previously had really bad luck with the METABANK CARD in trying to get their payment from METABANK. METABANK customer representatives have been well schooled in pushing all blame back off onto the customer and never changing the way they operate.

The problem of MONEY MULES may exist, but we perceive that METABANK is part of the problem rather than any kind of a solution….. IF METABANK LIES  SO BOLDLY, SO BRAZENLY, AND SO BLATANTLY to others to get them to be their partner to push their prepaid cards for them, as they have to me,all of us who have been complaining for years now, METABANK IS USING THE INTERNET AND THEIR PARTNER COMPANIES AS THEIR OWN MONEY MULES.

All of those stories dished out by METABANK indicating that they saw fraudulent activity on the account, or that the customer hadn’t given them adequate contact information when we know we have, and METABANK’s FAILURE TO BEGIN TO ADDRESS CUSTOMERS’ real needs indicates that METABANK itself is a form of a MONEY MULE.

METABANK seems to be trying to distract from what they are doing and have been doing repeatedly by diverting the attention of someone they perceive to be significant…. Who or what that may be, we don’t know.

WE DO KNOW THAT METABANK SCAMS THEIR OWN CUSTOMERS AND THEN LIES TO THEM SO THAT METABANK CAN USE THAT CUSTOMER’S CASH MONEY AS AN INTEREST FREE LOAN FOR THE BENEFIT OF METABANK…..

We perceive that METABANK is working very hard to distract someone somewhere from their real purpose. Perhaps just so METABANK can keep doing the scam they already know and which they have perfected.

METABANK appears to be overusing the gimmick of protecting and finding fraudulent activity in their customer’s accounts without taking genuine steps to make customers’ own cash money available to them when they need it the most. We perceive this to be a diversionary tactic. METABANK has completely failed to create a reliable product that meets the needs of their genuine customer base.

How active are those MONEY MULES? Why should ordinary honest citizens be taken advantage of by the bank that tells them by using a METABANK PREPAID CARD that their money will be safer and more secure.

METABANK’s ACTIONS APPEAR TO BE A SMOKE SCREEN SO THEY CAN CONTINUE TO SCAM THEIR OWN CUSTOMER BASE.

METABANK uses the internet and partner companies so that they can have access to a large number of potential METABANK CUSTOMERS to whom they will continue to scam, steal from and then lie. It is a question of scale. We have found absolutely nothing honest about the way that METABANK operates.

Consumers, Bank Regulators, Investors, METABANK employees take note.

This is a cautionary message to try to protect honest and ordinary people. Your help is needed.

Just don’t do business with METABANK. Don’t invest in METABANK. Dig deeply if you are assigned to regulate METABANK. METABANK employees, can you risk your whole future by participating in scamming and lying to ordinary and honest hard-working people?

Because METABANK’s product is marketed by others, you may be using a METABANK product and not know it. As a consumer, you too must dig deeply and be very aware of all of the ties and associations any and all companies have at this time.

METABANK, the way that METABANK continues to operate in spite of a multitude of consumer complaints, and that they do seem to care about the well-being of their customer base in any real and visible way, indicates that there is a real problem within METABANK

 

 

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by mrnd5 on January 31, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Accountability, Annual Income of META BANK's CEOs, Bank Publicity that is simply "Garbage Talk", Bank Reform needed, BANK REFORMS NEEDED TO BE CAREFULLY REGULATED, METABANK lies to their own customers, Money Mules, PREPAID CARDS promoted by METABANK
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Posted by mrnd5 on January 31, 2013

https://mrnd5.wordpress.com/2013/01/31/customers-matter-for-the-sustainable-success-of-all-business-entities/

METABANK CEOs make huge overly abundant annual incomes; The average METABANK employee doesn’t even make a living wage; they earn below the poverty level

“If we truly cared about the poor, we would have a federal living wage.” METABANK’s average employees earn wages that put them at poverty level or below while METABANK CEOs earn excessively large amounts of income annually

Are we ready for change?

By , Published: January 22

I listen to presidential speeches with an ear to the parts about personal finance. In President Obama’s second inaugural address, he made a few interesting points.

The first reference came when he said, “For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.” [ This is the design plan for how METABANK believes they can find success by taking advantage of the underbanked/unbanked. METABANK often brags about “serving” the unbanked/underbanked, but what METABANK does is unscrupulous. METABANK creates a lot of fine print in which METABANK retains all control in many and varying ways…. Many former customers have complained for years. The complaints are always the same. METABANK has no intention of meeting customers real and very articulately expressed needs… METABANK, as far as American consumers are concerned is so consumed by their own profits that they fail to serve humanity or even their own customer base.]

I immediately wondered: Do we as a nation really understand this?

I don’t think so. If we did, I wouldn’t receive numerous e-mails from people criticizing programs that help those who fell into the housing sinkhole. Their complaint? Why should those people get help when I did all the right things financially and I don’t qualify for anything? The e-mail writers see irresponsible people who don’t deserve help. They don’t acknowledge the predatory practices that pushed some borrowers into mortgages they couldn’t afford.

Obama went on to say: “We believe that America’s prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class. We know that America thrives when every person can find independence and pride in their work, when the wages of honest labor liberate families from the brink of hardship.”

On his first point, I agree. The middle class is the focus of much of the country’s attention, but often at the expense of the poor. [ Think carefully about this because if the poor are suffering, the effects will spill over into all of society. Ignoring the working poor and then compounded by the fact that METABANK wants people to have their salary or government checks directly deposited into a checking account that is connected to a debit card with the promise that by using the debit card often that their customer base will be able to improve their credit history, but which only gives METABANK, a proven abuser of their customer base, full control of their depositors money. The fact that banks knowingly gave loans to people who had not real way to be able to pay for them is the real crime… yet those people aren’t in jail. METABANK’s track record and the shear number of customer complaints about how they have been lied to and abused by METABANK speaks for itself!!!!!]

If we truly cared about the poor, we would have a federal living wage.

The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. How can families get decent housing, pay for the necessities (food, utilities, transportation) and save for retirement or their kid’s college education, as we constantly admonish them to do, on about $15,000 a year on one paycheck?

Many two-income households can’t make it on low-wage and even mid-wage salaries.

On raisetheminimumwage.com, a project of the National Employment Law Project, the advocates say the federal standard would be $10.58 an hour if pegged to inflation over the past 40 years. Even at that amount it would still be tough to make ends meet.

The law project released a report last year discussing twin trends during the recession —

      • the loss of mid-wage jobs (occupations with median hourly wages from $13.84 to $21.13)

      • and the growth of lower-wage jobs (median hourly wages from $7.69 to $13.83).

  • Lower-wage occupations were 21 percent of recession job losses but 58 percent of recovery growth, according to the report.
  • Mid-wage occupations were 60 percent of recession losses but only 22 percent of recovery growth.

“In short, America’s good jobs deficit continues,” the report said.

I’m about to send my oldest child off to college. Even if she goes to school in-state, it will cost more than $20,000 a year in tuition, fees, room and board.

How in the world could even a two-income family making minimum wage be able to save more than $80,000 to send a child to college? Yes, they could shave a lot off that cost by having their student attend a community college or pick a commuter-campus school. But it’s still a big financial hurdle to jump, assuming no other life issues come into play such as an illness or job loss.

Obama also talked about equal pay for women, arguing that “our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts.” As the mother of two daughters, I’d like specifics on what more the president hopes to do to eliminate the gender pay gap.

I don’t believe enough people, as Obama claimed, “recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us at any time may face a job loss or a sudden illness or a home swept away in a terrible storm.”

[It seems to us as consumers that METABANK is waiting to pounce on consumers at every and at any chance they can rationalize in their own minds. It will be for us as consumers to demand living wages for all jobs.]

Income inequality is increasingly dividing our country.

They arrogantly believe they have achieved success on their own.

And many have-nots often don’t help their case when they act financially irresponsibly.

[Worse yet when those same people made those poor choices based on false and misleading information…. We expect U.S. Banks to protect all of our assets and especially those of those most economically fragile, but that is where METABANK makes their biggest income… off of the poor.]

And yet even when they do make mistakes, we should have compassion and fight to maintain the social safety nets — Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security — that, as Obama said, “do not sap our initiative. They strengthen us.”

Obama still has hope.

“We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else,” he said.

I’ve known hunger.

I nearly ended up in foster care.

But I believed that I could succeed.

And I did it. But not alone. I had help. I had my grandmother.

And she had help through the state medical assistance program that she relied on so I could get treatment for rheumatoid arthritis.

Rising tides do lift all boats. Maybe soon, we the people will agree.

Readers may write to Michelle Singletary at The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071. Personal responses may not be possible, and comments or questions may be used in a future column, with the writer’s name, unless otherwise requested. To read previous Color of Money columns, go to postbusiness.com.

Well spoken, Michelle Singletary!!!

++++++++++++++

Much of this comes down to how we describe success, and the word “Success” is at this time a buzz word.

Success carries a different meaning for different people.

The first meaning or definition of Success that is given in the dictionary is “The accomplishment of an aim or purpose”

The second definition given for Success is “The attainment of popularity or profit.
What if an entity or even an individual was solely created so that they set out to do something that was detrimental to others?

Prosperity based on the sacrifice of or at the expense of the general welfare and well-being of others is immoral.

 When success is defined, for example, in any of the following ways:

  • “We’re looking for something where we can make something happen: an industry where the competition is asleep, hasn’t taken advantage.” ~ unknown entrepreneur **
  • “Banks and other providers of credit to households have been competing vigorously to expand or protect their market share. In the process, lending standards have been progressively eroded so that lenders are now engaging in practices that would have been regarded as out of the question five or ten years ago.” I. M.- Banks – Competition – Risk – Growth **
  • “Marx was right when he said capitalism would destroy itself as capitalist would eat capitalist until they became so big they could not compete.” D. S. – Capitalism – Growth – Competition vvvv
  • “An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.” J. W. – Action – Learning – Competition
  • “We worry about staying competitive as well as continue to come up with new things” J.Y. – Competitive     xyz
  • “Many businesses with unpopular products or inefficient production find it much easier to curry the favor of a few influential politicians or a government agency than to compete in the open market.”                                                                     C. K    Business – Products – Politicians – Competition **
  • “You’ve got to look for a gap, where competitors in a market have grown lazy and lost contact with the customer base”                  R.M.  Growth – Competition – Lazy – Customers **
  • “I have always loved the competitive forces in this business. You know I certainly have meetings where I spur people on by saying, “Hey, we can do better than this. How come we are not out ahead on that?”                                                                        B.G.  Innovative – Improvement – Competition – Encouragement **
  • “I believe that competition in the future will not be only an advertising competition between individual products or between big associations, but that it will in addition be a competition of propaganda.” E.B. – Competition – Propaganda – Advertising – Products – Big Business      xxxx
  • “If you’re attacking your market from multiple positions and your competition isn’t, you have all the advantage and it will show up in your increased success and income.” J. A. – Marketing – Competition – Success >>>

Then success is at the expense of humanity, of peace, of healing the wounds in society

** If a business, a corporation, or a bank like METABANK/BANKMETA, seeks to distract their own employees from what the CEOs are really asking of them as employees so that even the employee doesn’t understand that what they are doing is immoral, this is  a failure to exercise the care that a reasonable person would exercise in the same or similar situation. This is illegal.

METABANK/BANKMETA requires their customer representatives to lie on the phone…. What inspires these employees to lie? It appears that they are lying using a script/ a list of lies or standardized reasons for why that customer can’t access even their own money.

**     “I have always loved the competitive forces in this business. You know I certainly have meetings where I spur people on by saying, “Hey, we can do better than this. How come we are not out ahead on that?”      B.G.  Innovative – Improvement – Competition – Encouragement    

METABANK requires their underpaid employees to do the dirty work of lying to other people who most likely are more like them than Haahr, Leedom or Moore. Why would such underpaid employees lie for METABANK?

Please think about all of the implications in this… We are being mislead by corporate powers to believe and do things that if we had considered them, we never would have done them. METABANK tellers are required to have a GED or a high school diploma.

>>> If a business indicates that they are attacking the market from multiple positions and their competition isn’t, this “successful” entrepreneur indicates that the company, the business, the corporate entity, or a bank like METABANK, will have all the market advantage.

NO mention is made of serving the needs, those real needs of their customer base. The expressed desire is a competitive advantage that will increase the profits for the CEOs….. Please note that only the CEOs, those at the top make $700,000.00 a year in income. METABANK is an Iowa based bank; here is a list of the average salaries for bank employees in Iowa:

Average Salary of Jobs with Related Titles

In USD as of Jan 27, 2013

 

METABANK/BANKMETA’s home base is located in Storm Lake, Iowa.

Here are the average annual incomes for bank employees in Storm Lake, Iowa:

Average Salary of Jobs with Related Titles

 

Storm Lake, Iowa hires bilingual Financial Service Representatives, but in what ways is METABANK planning to provide a service to non-native English speakers?

Also of note, is that the salaries of bank employees in Storm Lake, Iowa are lower than their own state’s average.

 

Let’s look closer at how METABANK/BANKMETA operates:

2012 Poverty Guidelines for the
48 Contiguous States and the District of Columbia
Persons in
family/household		 Poverty guideline
1 $11,170
2 15,130
3 19,090
4 23,050
5 27,010
6 30,970
7 34,930
8 38,890
For families/households with more than 8 persons,
add $3,960 for each additional person.

Tellers in Storm Lake, Iowa  make  an annual salary of $8,000.00

While “Sales Base Allowance in Storm Lake, IA”  (Although we aren’t really sure what this position is all about, it appears that sales, publicity and marketing bank products for Storm Lake, Iowa banks such as METABANK/BANKMETA)  make   $57,000.00 per year. We have often noted that METABANK/BANKMETA creates impressive publicity, but the product which is the same product but offered using a different name, simply doesn’t measure up to the promises in their own publicity….. False advertising amounts to predatory banking practices.

“Sales Base Allowance in Storm Lake, IA” as bank employee makes  a whopping $57,000.00 as compared to the $8,000.00 that “Service Representative Teller in Storm Lake, IA” make, and the $7,000.00 that is annual salary for the “Bank Teller National in Storm Lake, IA”, and the $  11,000.00 ”Service Representative Bank Teller in Storm Lake, IA” (note the addition of the word ‘bank’ to create a different pay level from a ”Service Representative Teller in Storm Lake, IA”) makes in the same city.

All of these pay scales creates the working poor, the same targeted customer base to which METABANK caters. A one person household must earn at least  $11,170 to remove themselves from being considered as living in poverty according to the 2012 Poverty Guidelines for the 48 Contiguous States and Washington, D.C

$13,214.29 is the overall average of the employees of banks in Storm Lake, Iowa.

Because METABANK/BANKMETA is home-based in Storm Lake, Iowa it follows that the METABANK/BANKMETA pay scale for their employees  would closely parallel these averages.

The unusually high salary of $57,000.00  given to ”Sales Base Allowance in Storm Lake, IA” was not included in this average because it was so greatly different from all of the salaries earned by other bank employees.

A two person household must have at least $ 15,130.00 annual income just to be able to get by.

However, the average salary of bank employees in Storm Lake, Iowa is only $13,214.29.

We can all then assume that METABANK/BANKMETA employees for the most part live at or close to poverty levels. METABANK hires and keeps their employees in a fragile economic state.

The average employee of METABANK/BANKMETA lives in poverty. They are the working poor who live from paycheck to paycheck just to survive.

METABANK’s CEO’s annual incomes

J. Tyler Haahr has been appointed as Chairman of the Board, President, Chief Executive Officer of Meta Financial Group, Inc., and MetaBank, a subsidiary of Meta Financial Group, Inc. The Board of Directors elected Mr. Haahr to serve as its Chairman effective October 1, 2011. He follows his father in that same position.  Haahr has been employed by Meta Financial and its affiliates since March 1997, and his “BASIC COMPENSATION” is:

Total Annual Compensation, USD          396,550 

Long-Term Incentive Plans, USD                –

 All Other,                                                             280,768

USD Fiscal Year Total, USD                    1,001,860

(This amount alone is far more than what the average employee makes at METABANK…. yes, that customer service representative who lies to you over the phone isn’t doing it because they themselves are making a great income by doing this to people who are more like them than Haahr is…. We find this to be rather bizarre.)

J.Tyler Haahr also receives: OPTIONS COMPENSATION

                                   Quantity                Market Value

Excercisable                 96,164                553,935.00

Unexercisable                9,375 –

Excercised                      30,600                370,581.00

This amount is far more than the average employee at METABANK

Haahr makes an additional amount in options income of $924,516.00  and that alone is way more money than the average salary than most of the employees of METABANK.

$924,516.00 +    $1,001,860.00 = $1,926,376.00 

Haahr makes at least $1,926,376.00 from his affiliation with METABANK. It can be assumed that he is also invested in other corporate entities. Banks don’t pay great interest on savings accounts at this time so it is highly probable that J. Tyler Haahr is well  invested in various entities.

vvvv ”Marx was right when he said capitalism would destroy itself as capitalist would eat capitalist until they became so big they could not compete.” D. S. – Capitalism – Growth – Competition

In the USA, we have prided ourselves on having a strong middle class. A strong middle class has been associated with stability. We had south America and their state of chaos paraded before us in Social Studies Classes for a number of years. The political upheavals were attributed to  the disproportionate distribution of wealth. We watched as South America appeared to be in war and war with coup after coup…. (Then we may perchance meet someone from Central or South America who tells us that the U.S.A. was involved in what was happening in their countries all along… It was our corporate power houses who were funding upheavals in Central and South America to gain access to raw materials in a way that would allow US Corporate entities to flourish.)…

…Still, U.S. text books continued to indicate that the presence of a strong middle class is what brought citizens of the USA stability and prosperity. This makes the assumption that the middle class actually exists and that their vote actually counts for something. The role of lobbyists may have been glossed over for the power they are able to be able to push policy through in the US Senate and the US House that may not actually serve the general public in any kind of positive way.

Small businesses are just about impossible to start up at this time in the U.S.A. Now we find in the USA that great divide between the rich and the working poor, just like what we had been told existed and which had caused chaos and internal military coups one after the other.

Some Americans complain that “Those people are coming up here to take our jobs.” I over heard this at a mall, and I knew that those two old men had never stooped walking through fields to harvest crops nor had they worked as custodians or hotel housekeepers. Once the owners broke the meat packing industry’s union, those meat packing companies can’t find native born U.S. citizens to work in their meat packing company in the U.S.A. In recent news, we have read that union busting continues and that it is expanding. Caution is advised here.

The middle class may no longer exist in the USA, but it also isn’t fair to expect people to work and to exist in a state of poverty that amounts to being a form of economic servitude.

“America’s good jobs deficit continues”

Good jobs means those that pay a wage that will keep hard working people out of being in a state of poverty and from having to live in a state of economic instability.

METABANK’s practices basically seek to create a form of economic servitude so that the CEOs of METABANK can get richer and richer. The values and the definition for success found in the way that METABANK does business is destructive for what we have longed prized as being our fundamental American values.

********

METABANK’s CEO’s annual incomes

David W. Leedom serves as Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President, Treasurer, Secretary of Meta Financial Group, Inc. He is Executive Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer, and Chief Financial Officer of the Company after being appointed to the position on January 28, 2008. Additionally, Mr. Leedom is a member of the Executive Committees for both the Company and the Bank.

He previously served as a Senior and as an Executive Vice President for BankFirst for 11 years prior to joining Meta in January 2007; his experience at BankFirst included his positions as EVP of Accounting and Finance and Credit Portfolio Management. Mr. Leedom’s experience also includes 11 years at Citibank.

BASIC COMPENSATION

Total Annual Compensation, USD  229,056

Long-Term Incentive Plans, USD –

All Other,                                         USD  194,963

Fiscal Year Total,                      USD 586,209

OPTIONS COMPENSATION – none listed

David Leedom takes in at least $586,209.00 each year from METABANK.  No options compensation is listed.  That is rather odd. The average METABANK  employee earns at a level close to or below what is considered to be the poverty level.

$586, 209.00 is far above the poverty level so that Leedom’s family can live very comfortably. Given this amount of income, it can also be assumed that Leedom is investing elsewhere too. Bank interest just doesn’t make much money for bank customers.

Unless different rules apply to Haahr and Leedom, we must assume that they have a very diversified portfolio. What interests do they hold in other countries that may influence how they operate elsewhere?

“We worry about staying competitive as well as continue to come up with new things” J.Y. – Competitive     xyz          METABANK offers the same same product but changes the name of the product. METABANK only can appear to be competitive, but through that illusion they work their scam and make money. Nothing is morally sound nor does it serve to build up our society.

The thought process within and driving METABANK’s actual practices is aberrantly conceived so they are predatory and abusive.

******

METABANK’s CEO’s annual incomes

Troy Moore III, is Chief Operating Officer, Executive Vice President, Director of Meta Financial Group, Inc.  Moore is Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Meta Financial Group, Inc. The Board of Directors appointed Troy Moore III to fill the vacancy on the Board of Directors created by James S. Haahr’s retirement, effective October 1, 2011. Previously, Mr. Moore was the president of the Central Iowa Market of MetaBank, a position he from 1998 to 2005. He joined MetaBank in 1997 as a Vice President in the Central Iowa Market.

The reported “BASIC COMPENSATION” for Troy Moore III is:

Total Annual Compensation, USD 189,999

Long-Term Incentive Plans,   USD –

All Other,                                     USD 269,689

Fiscal Year Total,                      USD 459,688

No “Options Compensations” are listed for Moore. However, $459,688.00 is such a significant amount of income that he could be investing quite well. What Moore, Haahr and Leedom make each year exceeds what its absolutely necessary to be able to survive. Given their annual incomes and assuming that these amounts are accurate, what Haahr, Leedom and Moore make far more each year than the average employee at METABANK, the ones hired to lie to their own customers…

…Troy Moore III’s annual income far exceeds the income of the average employee at METABANK. It is those low paid METABANK who doing the lying, as instructed by their CEOs, to the customers of METABANK. They are the ones who must do the dirty work of lying, but why lie????

….As a former customer, I had to ask “Why lie?” I had never seen such awful customer service before.

The lies were bold and blatant lies, but METABANK had all control of my money and kept it from me when I needed it the most. The publicity that stated their prepaid cards were safer and more secure than using cash; that is true for METABANK, but not true fort customers. METABANK’s prepaid cards are a real money maker for them, and even if applied according to the myths they promote in their own publicity, METABANK would be making huge amounts of money.

The need to make more each year than the year before amounts to a form of greed and reflects a perverted image of what constitutes success.

xxxx  “I believe that competition in the future will not be only an advertising competition between individual products or between big associations, but that it will in addition be a competition of propaganda.” E.B. – Competition – Propaganda – Advertising – Products – Big Business             

It appears that although METABANK excels in doing publicity that their publicity promotes a product that in reality doesn’t serve customers in the way they say it will. It also appears that METABANK needs their competition to imitate their product so that their practices “can become normalized” and made to be perceived as common practice when it is a great fraud and abuse of the American people in the way that they do business and the way that they treat their customer base, humanity, ordinary people like you and me. We are all being scammed together… It is just that some haven’t realized it yet.

*******

Bradley C. Hanson serves as Executive Vice President, Director of Meta Financial Group, Inc., and Executive Vice President of MetaBank, a subsidiary of Meta Financial Group, Inc.

He serves on the Board of Directors and Executive Committee for the Network Branded Prepaid Card Association. Hanson has been employed by MetaBank since May 2004. From 1991 until joining MetaBank in May 2004, Mr. Hanson was employed by Bankfirst in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where he served in a variety of capacities,including Senior Vice President of Payment Systems from March 2001 to April 2004. Hanson received his B.A. degree in Economics from the University of South Dakota in 1988. He attended the ABA School of Bankcard Management at the University of Delaware in 1996 and the ABA Graduate School of Bankcard Management at the University of Oklahoma in 1997.

Hanson has been a director of the Company since 2005.

BASIC COMPENSATION

Total Annual Compensation, USD          360,500

Long-Term Incentive Plans, USD               –

All Other, USD                                                    252,753

Fiscal Year Total, USD                                  998,867

OPTIONS COMPENSATION

                           Quantity               Market Value

Excercisable       15,621                      32,454.00

Unexercisable     55,000                    105,350.00

Excercised              —                                 –

Bradley C. Hanson’s annual total income is then:

$998,867.00 + $32,454.00 + $104,350.00 = $1,135,671.00

$1,135,671.00 is so much more income than the average employee at METABANK.

In fact, METABANK’s average employee  make so little that they would for the most part be classified as the working poor, who live from pay check to pay check, in a state of financial instability and financial insecurity.

How does Hanson serve the well-being of humanity? It appears that the driving factor behind the way that METABANK operates is abusive of their customer base.

These are the people who are expected to manage the daily ordinary operations involving customer’s deposits.

Is this a wise decision by the CEOs of METABANK to underpay the majority of their employees?

**    “Many businesses with unpopular products or inefficient production find it much easier to curry the favor of a few influential politicians or a government agency than to compete in the open market.”

C. K    Business – Products – Politicians – Competition **

METABANK helped to create NBPCA. Together they paid far more than any other entity in 2009 to Rupli and Associates, Lobbyists in Washington D.C to advocate for legislation that would help them to market their prepaid cards so the METABANK CEOs could make more and more money each year.

Money seems to beget yet more money, but this shouldn’t happen at the expense and through the abuse of the majority of the American people.

So many customers over a period of years and years have complained about the unacceptable customer service they have received by using METABANK. METABANK makes all the rules and enforces them to their own benefit…. well, the benefit of their own CEOs while getting their low paid employees so little that they find themselves in a state of being among the working poor and then something is said to those employees to entice them to lie to people who are far more like them than the METABANK CEOs.

http://www.nbpca.com/nbpca-events.aspx

**   “I have always loved the competitive forces in this business.

You know I certainly have meetings where I spur people on by saying, “Hey, we can do better than this.

How come we are not out ahead on that?”   

B.G.  Innovative – Improvement – Competition – Encouragement **

It appears that METABANK uses this technique to get their low paid employees to lie for them.

Something is very wrong within the way that METABANK perceives they should treat humanity. For METABANK, making a profit is how they define success, but to such a perverted degree that they have given themselves permission to abuse their customers and the predatory ptractices found in the way they do publicity.

METABANK is not a proper role model for any other financial institution anywhere.

Similar Companies to Meta Bank:

Camden National Bank 
Situated in the Camden, ME area, Camden National Bank is a member of the Banks industry. Their Lead411 profile provides quality data containing valuable information like cfo info, social data, linkedin urls, other contacts, and data points on Camden National Bank’s CEO Gregory Dufour. If you need to send messages to Camden National Bank email addresses, you can find those addresses here attached to their domain of @camdennational.com. So far, Camden National Bank has greater than 250 employees and annually registers more than fifty million in income. At this time, there are 16 jobs up on their site, but those who are employed with them at this time have salaries within the range of $51452.

Guaranty Federal Bancshares, Inc 
Guaranty Federal Bancshares, Inc, a company that works within the Banks, industry, has greater than 100 employees, with the company netting more than ten million in yearly revenues. This Springfield, MO-based business has 4 job openings at this time with their staff earning wages of about $72713. Their profile on Lead411 presents significant data such as cfo contacts, linkedin data, and Guaranty Federal Bancshares, Inc email addresses with the @gbankmo.com domain as well as quality contact info regarding Guaranty Federal Bancshares, Inc’s CEO Shaun Burke. They have their head office in Springfield, MO.

Bank Mutual Corporation 
Bank Mutual Corporation, a Banks company, is based in Milwaukee, WI. It has greater than 500 employees and marks an annual income of more than twenty million. They can be reached through Bank Mutual Corporation email addresses indicated on their Lead411 profile with a domain of @bankmutual.com. Aside from email information, their Lead411 collection of data also includes details about Bank Mutual Corporation’s CEO Michael Crowley, chief financial officer contacts, facebook and linkedin profiles, etc. Salaries in Bank Mutual Corporation are somewhere in the amount of $80440, and currently there are 4 jobs available in the company.

BCSB Bankcorp, Inc 
Have you been searching for BCSB Bankcorp, Inc’s contact information for hours? Have you been trying to find BCSB Bankcorp, Inc’s CEO Joseph Bouffard’s @baltcosavings.com domain email address? We have other BCSB Bankcorp, Inc email addresses as well. Check out their pertinent company details on their Lead411 profile and find that they already have greater than 100 employee and a yearly income of more than ten million. As for salary, their employees earn within the range of $73381 and as of the moment there are 1 jobs available based on their site. BCSB Bankcorp, Inc is a Banks business and is based in Baltimore, MD and more information like linkedin facts, cfo executives and facebook profiles can be found within the Lead411 profile.

F.N.B. Corporation 
Situated in the Hermitage, PA area, F.N.B. Corporation is a member of the Banks industry. Their Lead411 profile provides quality data containing valuable information like cfo info, social data, linkedin urls, other contacts, and data points on F.N.B. Corporation’s CEO Stephen Gurgovits. If you need to send messages to F.N.B. Corporation email addresses, you can find those addresses here attached to their domain of @fnbcorporation.com. So far, F.N.B. Corporation has greater than 1000 employees and annually registers more than one hundred million in income. At this time, there are 2 jobs up on their site, but those who are employed with them at this time have salaries within the range of $44352.

++++++++++++++++++++

What is needed at this time?

  •  Bank Regulations need to be enforced

  • Proper Bank Regulations are needed

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by mrnd5 on January 28, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Bank Reform needed, METABANK average employees earn wages below the poverty level, METABANK CEOs create and require all of the rules, METABANK CEOs make huge annual incomes, Staying Competitive at What Expense, Success shouldn't be about profits - People mattter
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Posted by mrnd5 on January 28, 2013

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