Thread: SWAT Teams in St. Louis Protecting Bank of America; Refused

SWAT Teams in St. Louis Protecting Bank of America; Refused Customer Withdrawals

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db_P0wHs ... r_embedded

Oct 4, 2011

more: http://www.SHTFplan.com/

From what we can gather, according to eye witness testimony, St. Louis PD has barricaded the Bank of America building and is refusing customer access to deposits.

Eye witness account:

'They would not let me get past that barricade, where those three guys are. I talked to the liutenant of the St. Louis Police Department - and he said they [customers?] don't have a legal right - but he was going to try to work out something, a symbolic gesture where eight people to pull out their money, I being one of them.'

He came back later and said they [BofA] will not go along with that. You will have to withdraw your money online.'

Note that the Bank of America web site has been intermittently in and out of service for the last 72 hours, making it difficult, if not impossible for customers to access their accounts.

UPDATED: SWAT Teams in St. Louis Protecting Bank of America; Refused Customer Withdrawals

Mac Slavo
October 4th, 2011
SHTFplan.com
72 Comments

UPDATE: October 4, 2011 ; 16:30

It has come to our attention that this video was originally published in August of this year, thus is not a reflection of OccupyProtests currently taking place in New York and the rest of the U.S. We apologize to our readers for the mistake and inconvenience. While not exactly timely, the video nonetheless reflects what we believe will be the response by police departments the country over if bank runs were to become reality.

If this isn’t a indication of what’s to come, then we don’t know what is. This is what it’s going to look like when you try to get to the bank in the middle of a panic.

From what we can gather, according to eye witness testimony, St. Louis PD has barricaded the Bank of America building and is refusing customer access to deposits.

They wouldn’t let me in so I had to push. Somebody stopped me because they pointed at the SWAT team right there.

I don’t believe they have a legal right to keep me from getting my money. That’s why I pushed them. Forget about the SWAT team.

I’ve got a legal right to go into that bank and take my money out.

They would not let me get past that barricade, where those three guys are. I talked to the liutenant of the St. Louis Police Department – and he said they [customers?] don’t have a legal right – but he was going to try to work out something, a symbolic gesture where eight people could pull out their money, I being one of them.

He came back later and said they [BofA] will not go along with that. You will have to withdraw your money online.

Most of the people here [want to withdraw their money] . But they wouldn’t let nobody through. That was our intention [to withdraw our money].

In fact they told us we could do it. All of a sudden, somebody changed the rules. When I first got here they said “we’re going to let you go in and withdraw your money.â€

good ole Illegal Alien Supporting Bank of Amerika

Pfffft

I'm partying when this hell hole gets sucked into itelf

Tuesday, October 04, 2011 2:25 PM

"Get the Heck out of Bank of America" says Senator Richard Durbin, on Senate Floor; Rep Brad Miller Accuses Banks of "Vulgar Profits"

Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois is telling Americans to "Get the heck out of that bank", right on the Senate Floor. His comments are in response to Bank of America hiking fees on debit cards.

Please consider BofA Customers Urged by Lawmakers to Quit Lender Over Debit Fee http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-1 ... t-fee.html

Congressional Democrats are pushing customers to quit doing business with Bank of America Corp. and one lawmaker is looking to make it easier for them to do so as the biggest U.S. lender announced plans for new debit-card fees.

U.S. Representative Brad Miller, a North Carolina Democrat, introduced a bill today that would bar banks from imposing fees on people who close accounts, calling the proposal a response to the Charlotte, North Carolina-based firm’s plan to charge some debit customers an additional $5 a month.

“As megabanks flirt with menus of new fees, an increasing number of Americans will want to switch banks,â€

Monday, October 03, 2011 12:53 PM

Bank of America Website Malfunctioning "Again" Amid Volume Surge Following Debit Card Fee Hikes; New 52-Week Low of $5.60; Time to Switch Banks

Bank of America has taken "proactive" measures to manage traffic following a bad decision to hike fees on debit cards.

The bank has been swamped with traffic and instead of increasing servers, has taken measures in the bank's words "could result in some customers experiencing slowness or temporarily having access issues."

Lovely.

Please consider BofA website malfunctioning again http://finance.yahoo.com/news/BofA-webs ... 8.html?x=0

Bank of America's website, plagued by problems Friday and Saturday but supposedly fixed on Sunday, wasn't working again Monday.

Many users trying to access bankofamerica.com get a message saying the home page is temporarily unavailable. But spokeswoman Tara Burke said customers who experience slowness or can't get into their accounts should keep trying.

Burke said the access problems are a result of the bank managing traffic volume during peak use.

"We've simply taken some proactive measures to manage customer traffic during peak hours during the day," she said. "That could result in some customers experiencing slowness or temporarily having access issues."

She declined to say whether volume has surged in recent days.

The problems began Friday, a day after the bank said it would start charging a $5 monthly fee for customers using debit cards. Burke insisted there's no connection. The delays and the home page message persisted Saturday, but Burke said Sunday that things were fine.



Shared of Bank of America have solidly taken out the "Buffett is Buying" low reached in August. The spike to $8.79 was a good time to unload if you were still holding this turkey in any size.

Warren Buffett did not buy Bank of America shares, he got a sweet deal to buy debt that came with a free option to buy shares. The move was an obvious ploy by Bank of America to put a floor on the share price. It did not work.

Time to Switch Banks

My recommendation is that if you are at any bank that raises debit card fees, switch banks. That Bank of America's servers are flooded is a welcome sign that customers have had enough.

Adding insult to injury, the "proactive" way Bank of America handled this maneuver suggests blatant incompetence.

Addendum:

"PT" who lives in Seattle writes ...

Is this blatant incompetence and/or an effort to slow customer transfers? It's time for BofA customers, such as myself, to take some of our own proactive measures and move our accounts to a bank which is capable of handling "peak traffic".

I bank with BofA in Washington, which has a totally separate portal for accessing accounts. It has been offline since 7:00 am Seattle time, when I first tried to access my account, and that is hardly what I would call a "peak traffic" hour. An electronic run on the bank prompted by customers fed up with their incompetence and, most recently, their plan to impose a fee on debit card usage.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot. ... oning.html

Bank Of America Site Down For Third Day In A Row

Submitted by Tyler Durden
10/04/2011 11:40 -0400
Comments: 229 / Reads: 13,784

Well this is starting to get a tad disturbing. When BofA gets its site up, it would be very helpful if it could please notify its clients how much of the $1 trillion in deposits as of June 30, 2011 it has left as of end of close today?



http://www.zerohedge.com/news/bank-amer ... rd-day-row

Indict Dick Durbin- and Eric Holder too

John Ransom
Oct 05, 2011

Most states have laws on their books that make it illegal to spread statements about a bank in order to undermine confidence in the bank.

They do this for the very good reason that when a run on a bank starts through rumor or innuendo and the bank goes belly up- and it happens very quickly- it costs taxpayers money, it costs shareholders money and it costs society as a whole.

The rule, in other words, is to be very careful about what you say about banks. Banks live by these rules and so do regulators. In fact, when a bank is in trouble with regulators, the information is considered confidential and not to be disseminated to the public.

Here’s the relevant code from New York: http://law.onecle.com/new-york/banking/BNK0671_671.html

§ 671. False statements or rumors as to banking institutions. Any person who wilfully and knowingly makes, circulates or transmits to another or others any statement or rumor, written, printed or by word of mouth, which is untrue in fact and is directly or by inference derogatory to the financial condition or effects the solvency or financial standing of any bank, private banker, savings bank, banking association, building and loan association or trust company doing business in this state, or who knowingly counsels, aids, procures of induces another to start, transmit or circulate any such statement or rumor, is guilty of a misdemeanor.

Really, it’s in our best interest to foster confidence in our banking system rather than the opposite. The whole banking system rests on people’s confidence in it: banks have confidence debtors will pay; debtors have confidence that they’ll be able to pay and depositors have confidence that the bank will be able to pay. Confidence is why laws like trying to adversely effect the solvency or financial standing of any bank are on the books to begin with.

And that’s why it was doubly startling to see US Senator Dick Durbin (D-Walgreens) frothing with hysteria while trying to kill a major US bank- a bank that presents a systemic risk for our entire banking system- from the floor of the US Senate. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/20 ... that-bank/

And the crime that bank committed?

It wasn’t mortgage fraud, or loan discrimination or accounting irregularities.

Nope. It was a $5 per month debit card fee that Democrat legislation created.

From Fox News and the Washington Examiner: http://nation.foxnews.com/bank-america/ ... swipe-fees

Durbin pitched his amendment, which empowered federal bureaucrats to fix the fees banks can charge merchants for each debit card transaction at 24 cents, as a blow to the "excess profits" of "big banks." Banks currently charge an average of just 44 cents per transaction, but for big retailers like Wal-Mart, all those transactions can add up. Analysts estimate that the Durbin amendment will be a $6.6 billion boon for the Targets and Walgreens of the world.

Glad to know the Democrats draw the line somewhere...and successfully connect the dots to average consumers.

Overload on sub-prime mortgages and you qualify for a federal bailout. But disagree with a nonsensical “bank reformâ€

Bank of America website still having problems

By The Associated Press / AP – Tue, Oct 4, 2011

..NEW YORK (AP) — Bank of America's consumer online banking service was slow for a fifth day Tuesday, and the bank still wasn't saying what the problem was.

The bank said many times starting Friday that it had resolved the problem, but visitors to its home page still saw an error message for much of Tuesday saying the site was "running slowly" and customers might experience delays or have difficulty accessing parts of it.

The message encouraged customers to try again at "a non-peak time" or visit an ATM or one of nearly 6,000 branches to get into their accounts.

Bank of America Corp., based in Charlotte, N.C., is the largest U.S. bank by deposits and has 29 million online customers.

Spokeswoman Tara Burke said the website problems were not the result of hacking. She declined to "break out the root cause" for the problems but said the bank was continuing to assess the situation. She said Tuesday evening that the site was largely operating normally.

This wasn't the first time this year that Bank of America's website experienced problems. Customers also had difficulty accessing their accounts in January and March. In both instances, the bank said the problems resulted from routine system upgrades.

The most recent stumble is significant because of its duration, said Ben Rushlo, director of performance management at Keynote Systems Inc., which monitors the performance of company websites.

He said it was the longest major banking website problem he's seen in 13 years with Keynote.

"It's extremely unusual in 2011, given the prevalence of online banking and that it's the de facto way people interact with banks," Rushlo said. "This is something gone awry. There's no way they would've intentionally taken down their home page."

Rushlo said that the incident doesn't seem connected with Bank of America's announcement Thursday that it would start charging customers $5 a month to use their debit cards.

Several major banks have introduced new or higher fees for checking account customers in the past year. The industry says the changes are needed because of a new regulation that limits the fees they can collect from merchants whenever customers swipe their debit cards.

http://news.yahoo.com/bank-america-webs ... 18877.html

Bank of America refuses to let customers close accounts

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtI85Zc6Oik

Aug 14, 2011

At a rally in St. Louis on August 12, 2011, several people with savings and checking accounts at Bank of America tried to walk into the building to close their accounts. The suits and the police they had there to back them up wouldn't allow it.