This is TOO funny! NEVER expected a BANK & Fashion connection!!! I can see it now in the thread-title.... I s'pose you guys were thinking..."WTH is Faron rambling about now"?!??!?! Re the movie "Fargo". THE ONLY scene actually filmed HERE was the opening home-kidnap scene! Most was filmed in/around Brainerd, MN, and Minneapolis.... Saaayyyyy... What'dya mean Fargo is frigid country?!?! We're having a VERY mild winter. Cooler tonite though, down to -5 actual. AJ- Yeah....I'm interested in lots of things! I can even critique what I think of Vanna Whites' Hair, Wardrobe, and Makeup when WOF starts! Hate to say this, but Joan Rivers "Fashion Police" show is a hoot sometimes!! For a while now, I thought the last segment was called "Fash-'Ho" of the week!!!!!!!!! LOL! DD corrected me. Faron

Hi Bethesdamanman, My apologies then, Dave. I thought that I had recalled you posting on the other board that mortgage rates would stay low for years and years, and that we would never return to the high rates of years past. My error. Eeeesschhh .... well.... actually... kinda sorta, YES.... your apologies in this case are NOT warranted. Herein lies a case of "text failing where a verbal conversation *may* have worked better." I've never said rates would stay low "well... forever".... I HAVE said rates (30 FRM rates to be precise) will unlikely climb over 7% in our lifetimes. I *STILL* stand by that.... albeit, I am now offering that we are entering a territory of government-induced inflation at levels I (perhaps naively) thought the United States political system was above. If we continue down the path of dollar-dilution that we've begun accelerating along, there are only two end-game results; A) we reverse course back out of it before we self-destruct in revolution, B) we self-destruct (and the devil we do not know is always a potential problem.) *IF* we successfully reverse and dig ourselves out of the hole of trouble our most recent past and our current government administrations are hell-bent on digging us into... there are only two ways of "sopping back & vacuuming up" the diluted unbacked funny-money that has been injected out into the system; A) The Treasury collects more taxes than it provides to the government to spend, and/or, B) The Fed increases interest rates higher than its blended payout on the treasury bonds (and then some... the greater the positive income spread to the Fed, the more painful to the "fixed-income retired crowd" which is our baby-boomer bubble... who will rally with AARP-sponsored pitchforks.) Both A & B will be met with *MASSIVE* resistance from the only crowd that the poloticos *KNOW* will consistently show up to vote, and have almost unlimited spare time to write, call, email, and generally pester the daylights out of the politicians; The Seniors. SO.... I've learned to never rely on "common sense" when it comes to anticipating "government logic" (an oxymoron if there ever was one.) Obama has enlisted the original architect of option B... Paul Volcker... as a "senior economic advisor." ("Senior" may (MAY) work somewhat to our advantage here... as Gramps Volcker *MIGHT* have some age-gained sensitivity to his classmate comrade's plight.) Volcker is the one who decided to fight inflation in the 1970's by driving short-term interest rates up to the 20%'s... The late '70's and early '80's result was that Volcker recaptured (in a VERY painful way) the excess liquidity (flooding of funny money) our country created by going off the gold standard and adopting a "weak dollar" policy through the 1960's. WHAT WILL WA DC DO??????????????? I dunno.... (I know what I pray/chant/meditate they will do...) *IF* the government (both the loonie left & jackthug right) get OUT of the way of the naturally balancing markets... then my expectations and predictions stand, with virtually my 100% confidence. My fears are that the United States idea of a market-based capitalist self-righting system has been a grand and wonderful social experiment... but that the human frailties (compounded in mob psychology) are sabotaging the underlying DNA strands that made it possible to stand. My COMFORTING REALIZATION... is that despite my egoistic pride for being part of a "successful system".... even if that system turns out to be a decaying failure, INDIDIVIDUALLY I and my family, and those I guide, can still retain their own personal success and quality of life. Cheers, Dave Donhoff Leverage Planner

I don't have an account with Wells Fargo, but own some stock. The stock dipped a bit. I do understand how this could have happened. I haven't heard that any customers lost money - just that their deposits were used in a manner not disclosed to them. There could have been extra fees; I don't know. I fault management for setting up this situation. I saw something similar years ago in the company I worked for. We had a vice President who thought it productive (and fun to watch) to create competition and ill will among his working managers, the guys af the bottom of the management chain who are tasked with doing actual work and getting things done. It nearly wrecked the company. Instead of fostering an atmosphere of cooperation the company once had, it turned manager against manager. The production and maintenance engineers searched the system to find ways to shift costs to a different department. They found loop holes in the internal accounting system. One example: The factory ordered a batch of screws to assemble a particular product, however, due to an error in the orfering process, these parts were improperly heat treated and were useless, scrap in other words. Under normal circumstances, these parts would have been scrapped, new ones ordered, and the scrap loss would have been charged to the factory's budget. The factory was in one town and the development office was at another location 600 mile distant. The factory would enter a drawing change request for something very minor like a small change in the plating formula. This often happens when a vendor has a slightly different process, but one that is yet suitable. The home office approves the change and marks the box to scrap the older parts thinking there was not many and not knowing it was an entire lot for a week's production. Bingo! The scrap charges goes against the Development Dept.'s budget instead of the factory. In the accounting system, the cost of making the product has been artificially lowered. An accumulation of such shenanigans over the course of a year alters the true cost of manufacturing the product and its profit, which in turn, skews management's decisions about selling price and whether or not to continue to make the product, or to begin planning for a replacement or redesign. Upper Management was using certain pieces of data from the accounting system to calculate yearly bonuses to the line managers, and these managers were busily thwarting the accuracy of the system. It was a bad time to be working there. Thankfully, the executives caught on to what was happening and replaced this VP.

What?? I did not know about the pipeline, although I was aware of their employees creating fake accounts to reach sales goals. I wish I could pull out of WF. My mother has her accounts there and she is too old to think about changing. She wouldn't get it. I have an account there to because of her accounts. I also have an account with another bank. The only reason I keep that one is because there is a branch and ATM near my house that is convenient to use.