(Over)regulation

Here’s an example, from The Des Moines Register.  Federal banking and mortgage company employment “guidelines,” issued in May 2011 and February 2012, respectively, require these institutions to not employ

executives and mid-level bank employees guilty of transactional crimes, like identity fraud or mortgage fraud.

Fear of Federal litigation, though, has driven these enterprises to apply the regulations across the board to all employees, even the most junior.  Natasha Buchanan, an attorney with Higbee & Associates in Santa Ana, CA notes that

Banks are afraid of the FDIC and the penalties they could face[.]

The results include this one, involving a customer service rep making the princely sum of $30,000 per year.  Richard Eggers is a 68-year-old Vietnam veteran with a conviction, 50 years ago, of using a cardboard dime to try to fool a washing machine in a Laundromat.  He spent two days in jail way back then, and he’s been an upstanding citizen ever since, including that tour in Vietnam.

Now it’s true enough that the FDIC, for instance, has a waiver process that (fired) employees can follow, but it’s a six month-to-a-year effort that might end in denial. Even with gaining a waiver, though, six months is a long time for a low-wage ex-employee to be without a job, especially when it’s caused by Uncle Sugar.  The FDIC also has an “automatic waiver” that supposedly works “faster,” but it’s limited to people sentenced to less than year in jail and who never actually were locked up.  Those two days disqualify Eggers even from this government largess.

This has got to be stopped.

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