5 Thoughts for August 13, 2015

1. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fined Citizen's Bank for stealing money from its customers. My only question is, why wasn't anyone sent to prison for stealing millions? Most people get long jail terms for similar theft, especially if the people involved knew what was going on.
2. Staying on the CFPB, starting in October of this year, your home loan estimates will become standardized, making them clear and simple for anyone to understand.
3. Still sticking with the CFPB, they've released their first monthly report of complaints received, and the top 10, in rank of most to least, are: Equifax, Experian, BofA, TransUnion, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan-Chase, Citibank, Ocwen, Nationstar Mortgage and Capital One. No surprises, eh?
4. I seem to have a radar for this stuff. While walking late a few nights ago, I came upon a homeless woman lying in the middle of the road on her sleeping bag. I asked her if she was okay and we began to talk about her situation. She said that she was lying in the street hoping to get a cop to stop, but I told her that it'd be safer to lie on the sidewalk. I asked her if she wanted me to call the police for her, and she said yes, so I did -- she pointed to 20 feet away where three other homeless people were sitting around, indicating that she'd been beaten by her husband. I called the police and stayed there, watching over her as she first walked back to her friends, then back to me. When the first officer arrived, he had no back up, and so even though I had told him what happened and he said that I could leave if I wanted to, I stayed around to watch his back. After his back up arrived, before I walked away she got up to thank me, I shook her hand and told her to take care of herself. Life on the streets is not easy, and it's tougher when the people you trust most, end up breaking that trust, eh?
5. Last week, I restarted my PayPal account. I wanted to get the Thea Render while it was on sale, but it wouldn't go through -- a result of the folks who make the Thea Render using Paypal and Paypal having some odd rules in place disallowing foreign transactions without signing in. Since my bank didn't allow for foreign wire transfers, I had no choice but to restart my PayPal account. It was ultimately serendipitous, as the USD to Euro conversion rate is lower now than it was a few months ago when I last tried and failed to make this transaction when Thea Render was last on sale -- had it worked out the last time I tried, I would have paid more. :D