Wells Fargo is At it Again, This Time Charging People For Auto Insurance They Did Not Need

Last year’s scandal for Wells Fargo was the revelation that over 1.5m people were victims of fraud by overzealous employees, trying to hit quotas.

Yesterday we learned that a new fraud had been thrusted upon the Wells Fargo customer base, this time in the form of unneeded auto insurance. You’ve got to love their vigor.

To be clear, this sordid brand of fraud was perpetuated from 2012-2016.

Source: The Failing Ny Times

More than 800,000 people who took out car loans from Wells Fargo were charged for auto insurance they did not need, and some of them are still paying for it, according to an internal report prepared for the bank’s executives.

The expense of the unneeded insurance, which covered collision damage, pushed roughly 274,000 Wells Fargo customers into delinquency and resulted in almost 25,000 wrongful vehicle repossessions, according to the 60-page report, which was obtained by The New York Times. Among the Wells Fargo customers hurt by the practice were military service members on active duty.

“We have a huge responsibility and fell short of our ideals for managing and providing oversight of the third-party vendor and our own operations,” Franklin R. Codel, the head of consumer lending at Wells Fargo, said in an interview. “We self-identified this issue, and we made the right business decisions to end the placement of the product.”

The estimated damage by this foray into the bank accounts of their customers is estimated to be in the ballpark of $73 million – also known as ‘chicken scratch’ for Wells.

State insurance regulations required Wells Fargo to notify customers of the insurance before it was imposed. But the bank did not always do so, the report said. And almost 100,000 of the policies violated the disclosure requirements of five states — Arkansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Tennessee and Washington.

Wells Fargo took issue with some of the figures in its own report. In a statement, Jennifer A. Temple, a bank spokeswoman, said the bank determined only 570,000 of its customers may qualify for a refund and that just 60,000 customers in the five states had not received complete disclosures before the insurance placement. Finally, she said, the bank estimated the insurance may have contributed to 20,000 wrongful repossessions, not 25,000.

“We take full responsibility for these errors and are deeply sorry for any harm we caused customers,” Ms. Temple added.

As you can see, Wells Fargo is going to ‘take responsibility’ for getting caught for their new crimes. Refunds will be made and people will be fired. Also, they’ll likely enact a new share buyback program to support the stock price.

Alas, the stock is barely changed — chin up olde sport.

NYC Comptroller, Scott Stringer, is pissed off and wants action.

“This is a full-blown scandal — again. It’s unbelievable, outrageous, sad, and yet quintessential Wells Fargo. This isn’t just a corporate debacle. It’s caused real human harm. It’s reflective of a system that Americans feel is rigged against the little guy, and sadly symbolic of a culture that puts short-term profits ahead of creating sustainable value for shareowners. Everyday families have suffered and tens of millions of hard-earned dollars were stripped from unsuspecting Americans, many of whom are struggling just to get by. In the end, shareowners ultimately suffer the long-term consequences.

“We need accountability and we need it now. Investors have long said this board needs to change, and these new revelations only reinforce that urgency. Wells Fargo must immediately jumpstart this process by replacing Chairman Stephen Sanger with a new independent chairperson. Investors, as well as consumers and everyday Americans, have waited too long for accountability. This board needs to be overhauled — now.

“The Wells Fargo board must also immediately disclose to investors the circumstances of this new scandal. We need to know what the board knew and when it knewd it and how executives are being held accountable. While we appreciate that these findings emanated from a report the company itself launched, full transparency and accountability are non-negotiable.”

Yawn.

Are they retarded? Here is a group of George Soros funded protesters (I’m assuming it’s good olde George, since he’s the root of most tumult), celebrating the republican failure to repeal Obamacare, with scatter brained dancing and high fives. These people are literally celebrating a program that is designed to bankrupt them.

I do not pretend to have anything in common with GOP-shills, but these people are ridiculous. Obamacare has been an unmitigated catastrophe, by all definitions. But healthcare, as you know, has been a disaster for decades and will continue to plague the middle class until they cease to exist. We all know what the end game is here: single payer options, mandated healthcare for all citizens — just like social security.

The government will tax each paycheck and provide them with shitty healthcare. They will borrow from the healthcare fund, just like they did with social security, in order to continue their ruinous Ponzi-scheme like economic policies.

I want you to put all of your political biases aside and recognize the incontrovertible facts that our lawmakers have ruined the US economy. Sure, the stock market is doing great and rich people are richer than ever. Aspirational thinking provides the less off with hope, suppressing their anger, succored by a culture bereft of personal dignity, reliant upon wanton degeneracy and perfidious swindling to further an agenda that will eventually collapse all of western finance.

I think we can all agree that coffee is awesome. I think it was back in 2012 when I quit coffee for a year, under the presumption that most homeless people — worldwide — were avid coffee drinkers. I endeavored to separate myself from that chaff and went on a year long journey to extricate myself from the muddied beverage. You can search the archives and read about me and my Earl Grey Tea and how it was the only form of beverage suitable for a gentleman, such as myself.

After I fell off the wagon, like most things I do, I because obsessed with coffee. I read books about it and now consider myself an expert, an amateur barista/aficionado, if I might be so bold as to say so.

I understand the differences between arabica and robusta, the flavor profiles between a Vienna and a French Roast and I can make any of the bullshit drinks that you enjoy in Starbucks. My tour de force is my seasonal Pumpkin Latte, which blow Starfucks completely out of the water.

I digress.

I think we can also agree on the fact that Starbucks is boring and mostly trash. Even if you like their coffee — you don’t love it. If I had a coffee shop, you’d fucking love it — else I’d kill you. But I think it’s fair to say, most people love local coffee shops. There is nothing like a good hipster coffee shop. I generally wear my Bernie Sanders t-shirt when visiting these locales and ask for grass fed lattes while holding my Hillary Clinton book.

Seriously, Starbucks is sliding hard today and I cannot think of another major company in more trouble than them. They’re closing down 379 Teavana’s this year — taking the blackpill for their misguided acquisition.

Their mall based shoppes are under pressure due to lack of foot traffic.

Local coffee shoppes are popping up everywhere, eating away at the margins.

Starbucks On Call sees Q4 EPS of $0.54-0.55 vs $0.58 consensus, expects FY revs growth to come in at low end of previous guidance, and comps growth of 3-4% vs prior msd guidance (59.50 +1.56)

Will be closing all 379 Teavana mall stores in the coming year

Trends and ongoing macro pressures have them a little more cautious

Comp trends softened in backhalf of quarter and has continued into July

Stifel downgraded them, citing lack of visibility. This is wrong. The earnings and revenues visibility is crystal clear: they’re heading lower.

Stifel downgrades SBUX to Hold from Buy and lowers their tgt to $58 from $66 Buy following solid F3Q17 results but disappointing F4Q17 guidance, implying further deceleration in global and U.S. comparable store sales growth. Broadly, firm believes decelerating global comp growth (F3Q17 is the third consecutive quarter the 2-year CAGR decelerated, with further slowdown anticipated in F4Q17) suggests a combination of macroeconomic pressures in retail/restaurants and share loss. They think share loss is most meaningful as it likely requires increased investment to change the current glide path, which could likely lead to mgmt reducing long-term EPS growth targets in conjunction with F4Q17 results in November 2017. They believe lack of visibility on the timing of a sustained acceleration in comp growth will result in shares remaining range-bound near-term.

I think Howard Schultz is a genius. I read his book about turning Starbucks around and respect his leadership. From 2006-2009, SBUX was in a serious decline because Schultz had left and the company was literally falling apart. He came back and tried to reinvigorate the brand through a sundry of common sense changes, such as making the coffee shoppes smell like coffee again. They had been using vacuum sealed coffee, which resulted in the stores being bereft of the scent of java. Fucking retarded. But, like all things in life, they die.

Schultz is gone again, retired, and now it’s time for SBUX to being its long, arduous, winding road towards irrelevancy.

Whatever happened to King Dollar? I guess he was dethroned and summarily decapitated because the euro is now the dominant currency in the world.

A weak dollar is fantastic for exporters, but also for commodityfags. You can see the virility in the gold an oil markets, as a result of the dollar weakness. Whether this paradigm can hold is anyone’s guess. Best case scenario, the fucking dollar implodes Zimbabwe style and we call get rich holding our gold bricks, and shit.

Aside from commodity related stocks, the market is weak today. Hey, chin up there Jimmy. It’s Friday and time to inebriate yourself to the point of blacking out (extra vomit).

It looks like tech has winded itself out, on top of a beleaguered transportation index, layered on top of a ruinous retail and oil and gas environment. Pray tell me, once people get out of their hedge fund hotels, what the hell will they do with their money?

Judging by recent pin action, maybe gold?

Nasdaq futures are down 45 tonight. European markets are setting up for a minor bloodletting, off by 0.75%.

Nothing else is notable, aside from the White House circus act.

Look, we’re heading into August soon. Men of leisure are already summering and do not have time for stocks. Expect a pullback in August and maybe in September, followed by a gangster-like rally in September.

For the week, I’m losing money and will publish by results tomorrow. I do have a permanent 20% cash position, which has been designated for Exodus oversold signals. We haven’t had one in months, thanks to record low volatility. I hope we get to enjoy one soon.

The wins are always better when having to deal with a little adversity.

A PBS reporter was tasked with the finding out how conservative women survived in the deranged city of Portland, land of the Anti-faggot. Her findings are very much in line what I’d expected.

Nazis will not be tolerated and violence is often encouraged and condoned by leftists, who dream of a country run by marxist scum.

Watch.

Look at this nice, small, old man. You northern monsters are simply mean and without compassion for ideals that are different from your own. You live inside decadent nests, have been placated your entire lives, and cannot understand how a man like Jeffrey Sessions thinks, ever. Your demonization of the south borders on evil and you know it.

Tucker Carlson met up with AG Sessions in the disgusting cesspool of Central America today, in order to discuss recent events and then touched upon the topic everyone has been dying to know more about.

By all measures, AG Sessions conducted himself like a true southern gentleman, a man of distinguishable qualities. Instead of retorting the President’t attacks on his person, he doubled down on his support of the President. Naturally, this is a very common and duplicitous tactic, the oldest in the political handbook. It makes firing Sessions a little bit harder now.

Perhaps Mooch can step in and get rid of this cocksucker too?

Tucker and Sessions had a nice chat tonight. In short, leakers will be going to jail. Thanks for playing.

Ryan Lizza from the New Yorker published a tour de force, worthy of a pulitzer, describing his conversation with a fucking pissed off Anthony Scaramucci. Just so you know, Anthony isn’t happy with the leaks. As a matter of fact, I get the sense the whole point of Mooch’s appointment is to investigate EVERYONE in the White House, with carte blanche powers to shit can anyone he wants.

Personally, Anthony resonates with me, pissed off and angry, in spite of personal success. He’s not one of those little cocksuckers in DC, always sniveling and angling to aggrandize themselves. He’s seems genuine when he say “I am here to serve the President.”

Here are some of favorite passages from the New Yorker masterpiece, under the backdrop of Scaramucci trying to find out who leaked to Lizza his financial disclosures.

“Is it an assistant to the President?” he asked. I again told him I couldn’t say. “O.K., I’m going to fire every one of them, and then you haven’t protected anybody, so the entire place will be fired over the next two weeks.”

I asked him why it was so important for the dinner to be kept a secret. Surely, I said, it would become public at some point. “I’ve asked people not to leak things for a period of time and give me a honeymoon period,” he said. “They won’t do it.” He was getting more and more worked up, and he eventually convinced himself that Priebus was my source.

“They’ll all be fired by me,” he said. “I fired one guy the other day. I have three to four people I’ll fire tomorrow.

During his discussion with Lizza, Mooch deduced the leaker was that fucked face, Reince Priebus.

I’ll get to the person who leaked that to you. Reince Priebus—if you want to leak something—he’ll be asked to resign very shortly.” The issue, he said, was that he believed Priebus had been worried about the dinner because he hadn’t been invited. “Reince is a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac,” Scaramucci said. He channelled Priebus as he spoke: “ ‘Oh, Bill Shine is coming in. Let me leak the fucking thing and see if I can cock-block these people the way I cock-blocked Scaramucci for six months.’ ”

He called the authorities, you fucking pricks.

“I’ve called the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice,” he told me.

“Are you serious?” I asked.

“The swamp will not defeat him,” he said, breaking into the third person. “They’re trying to resist me, but it’s not going to work. I’ve done nothing wrong on my financial disclosures, so they’re going to have to go fuck themselves.”

Then he weighed into alt-right favorite, Steve Bannon.

Scaramucci also told me that, unlike other senior officials, he had no interest in media attention. “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock,” he said, speaking of Trump’s chief strategist. “I’m not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President. I’m here to serve the country.”

They’re all going to fucking jail.

He cryptically suggested that he had more information about White House aides. “O.K., the Mooch showed up a week ago,” he said. “This is going to get cleaned up very shortly, O.K.? Because I nailed these guys. I’ve got digital fingerprints on everything they’ve done through the F.B.I. and the fucking Department of Justice.”

“What?” I interjected.

“Well, the felony, they’re gonna get prosecuted, probably, for the felony.”

In case you were wondering what the neocon scum think of Mooch, here’s Bill Kristol calling Scaramucci’s appointment as ‘amusing and colorful, ‘the third world-ization of the American Presidency.’

He may be amusing and colorful–but let's not kid ourselves, Scaramucci is another step in the 3rd-World-ization of the American presidency.

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) July 21, 2017

I’m sure if Anthony could comment, the son of a construction worker, graduate of Harvard law and self-made millionaire, he’d tell Bill to go fuck himself.

Tucker Carlson will be interviewing AG Sessions tonight, regarding the crackdown on MS-13. During that interview, he will touch upon the recent criticism he’s been taking from the President, who seems to enjoy public executions.

He reportedly called the attacks ‘kind of hurtful’, yet at the same time praising Trump for being ‘a strong leader.’

“He is determined to move this country in the direction that he believes it needs to go to make it great again,” Sessions said. “And he has had a lot of criticism and he’s steadfast determined to get his job done and he wants all of us to do our job and that’s what I intend to do.”

AG Jeff Sessions to @TuckerCarlson on President Trump’s criticism of him: “it’s kind of hurtful”. Full intv 8pm @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/NG3VQnkwwc

— Pat Ward (@WardDPatrick) July 27, 2017

SAD!

Meanwhile, Sen. Graham says Trump will have ‘holy hell to pay’ should he fire Sessions.

The widely owned FANNG and THAT FAG PUB investment strategies are getting hammered, amidst a cacophony of sell orders.

ZH is trying to tie the sell off to some research note out of JPM.

ZPN is suggesting that democrats are shattin’in their pantaloons. Hence, the market doesn’t like it.

Earlier today I warned that trannies were getting killed and the Dow theory said ‘watch out below.’

We were all wrong. Let me explain.

VIX shorts are shattin’ in their pantaloons

Just yesterday I made the outrageous claim that XIV (inverse VIX) was the real Bernie Madoff, sans the fraud.

Today the VIX is spiking — because enough it enough. The good time have ended now — prepare to soil yourselves amidst the clangor of chaos.

These horrors are bore witness to inside the FANNG and THAT FAG PUB today.

Today’s bright and shining star is upside VIX ETF, UVXY. The triple lindy VIX, TVIX, is following in kind.

In short, the trannies topped on the same day Trump banned them from the military. All of the leadership stocks are getting killed. And, lastly, the volatility index nearly touched the 8s and is now demon racing higher.

Watch out below and please don’t shat your pantaloons.