He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them.
But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion …
Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations.
He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.
==John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Tags: John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Phil Ebersole's Blog 
December 14, 2014 at 4:55 am |
Reblogged this on Citizens, not serfs.
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December 15, 2014 at 9:13 pm |
I know and lived all sides. As I said testifying in DC with evidence to every regulatory agency and numerous AG’s I was just in all the wrong places at all the wrong time giving me a full picture with more pieces of the puzzle that just about anyone. The jobs and positions I held in multiple TBTF organizations allowed my to see and understand all sides by having direct involvement. Financial institutions from investment to consumer banking, third parties, services and attorney networks for all of the major backs, agencies and debt buyers. Regulators (mostly attorneys or recent grads doing internships) along with half the consumer attorneys in the country and class action attorneys all say I have it wrong I was in all of the right places at the right time. Sixty Minutes, NYT, WSJ, American Banker, Rolling Stone and so on most started the never before seen very detailed not only articles but full series of very detailed articles to educate regulators, judges, attorneys and consumers. and of course I am the “whistleblower” profiled in chapter eight. What you have seen in the media really only scratched the surface of every thing I launched with multiple regulatory agencies including finally bringing the SEC to the table and I think the first investigation in history where literally all regulatory and AG’s had to work together. There is a misconceptions that these practices started with mortgages and were picked up by credit card. That actually came from me not explaining it well to a NY Times reporter that ran the first story on me. A day before print he called me back and asked me since I had forked in Corporate level positions over all silos in other organizations I may know the answer to his question “is there anyway that this what you call “robosigning” is also happening in Foreclosures. I explained all of those processes are created and developed by Corporate Strategy and then rolled out to the silos. Basically same process different product. I really should copyright that”robosign”. Also, no matter how many times I say it or explain it no one seems to want to look at or care that neatly every credit card in the country is securitized as an ABS since. When my attorney Bruse Loyd introduced me in the regulators, and AG’s I testified to in DC he said ” my client has informed me she does not plan on stopping until yall fix this for the American people, and I believe her (BTW no laptops, notes, Ipads or) allowed same goes for all of the depositions I do. Ironically the first time I testified in DC was the same day and time Jamie Dimon was testifying before the Senate Banking Committee in that entire embarrassment to the entire country as well an insult. I mean really the one Senator in a high pitched little girl voice actually said “but Mr. Dimon what should we do”. The purpose of testifying before congress after billion of dollars in intentional fraud is to gather facts on the CRIME and decide actions and consequences. It did give me pleasure to be down the street throwing him under the bus with a box full of evidence and regulators all theway up the foodchain. now there are good lawyers and bad lawyers, same as regulators, cops, doctors, clergy and so on. A couple of very senior regulators and enforcement attorneys have actually really impressed me. Example, a major from page story I did for the NYT I emailed to a senior enforcement attorney that reports to the top it was sent at seven am and answered only eleven minutes later. There is a DC top firm that has been retained by AG’s for major cases on banks. They didn’t only have me testify for the investigations they included me and let me work with them to understand the banks, collection agencies, debt buyers, servicers etc.. Most court cases are lost for a couple of reason first the obvious the person was never sued and have no idea until months or years later by then impacting every part of their lives. A root cause of the latest term “modclosures” with first party and third party creditors and vendors and the 800 rent a lawyer paper pushers that as attorneys couldn’t find any job other than an overpaid bill collector. They are all using the most aggressive post judgement legal strategy I have ever scene pulling not only new judgments but all of the old ones sitting in the courts and they are garnishing wages, levying bank accounts including exempt accounts where the person only receives like social security, va benefits, disability, child support etc. Not to mention depending on the state putting liens on homes and forcing people that were doing fine financially into foreclosure. Well if you have a family with both spouses working and they (varies by state) garnish 26% of their wages after already cleaning out their bank accounts they don’t have the thousands of dollars to fight back and stop the bleeding the person out using an intentional planned strategy to use the judicial system to bypass all state and federal consumer protection laws. They are sweeping them month after month for incorrect and inflated balances and in most cases broke multiple state and federal laws to get the default judgement. They often let the default judgement sit for weeks months or ever years before acting and the consumer even finding out they were sued they call it “their retirement funds”. Latest issue the collection attorneys and foreclosure attorneys (same guys and firms no matter what the product type have now become debt buyers on the side. Personally I think major ethics violations there but wow you should see when I bring that up there will be 100 posts from consumer attorneys defending themselves and outright explaining the loopholes they are using. Last year when the federal investigation closed and the consent orders were issued (the OCC one specific o me on their website has been recently updated to include a lot that was not initially disclosed like they had to go back to 1/1/09 and buy back and re-mediate the accounts refunding the consumers and vacate the billions of dollars in default judgments in courts across the county. They got no fines or repercussions because they claimed they discontinued all ligation in 2011 when I launched the OCC investigation and auditors were camped you onsite for months leaving with a lot of documents. Everything proved up but I guarantee you my former employees went through shocking retaliation and strategies to get them to quit because they were long term employees and knew too much. Their no repercussions or fines let alone the refunds to consumers and halt to litigation puts them in intentional violation of those orders all the way up the food chain and unlike mortgages it isn’t rocket science to put these cases on trial most people have a credit card and a basic understanding at least of how they work.the products, systems, people and processes. Without that there will never be a level playing field. To make it worse to prevent case law they are putting high dollar attorneys on case where people counter sue or get a good attorney to fight. Then over and over I see this from consumer cases, class actions and AG’s as soon as it is filed they file to push it to federal court which a lot of attorneys don’t work in Federal Court, then they throw so many motions and pleading out there answering them basically bleeds the person dry in legal fees now more than the illegal balance they are collecting. I am preparing to go in for round three which I hope is the last. I am going to need as much public and media support as possible. But it is important forcing compliance with the occ/cfpb consent orders would actually give the largest stimulus in history without taking down any TBTF’s, crashing the stock market or anything else and it would be simple to do. So anyone sued for a Chase, WaMu or Providian credit card please contact me. My websites with all of the DIY information and everything was hacked a couple of months ago and taken down loosing all 52 pages so it will take a while to rebuild. I haven’t stopped and I have a lot of other whistleblowers or former employees behind me and we need all the help we can get because we are breaking all the rules of the “whistleblower code”. .
Linda Almonte
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December 15, 2014 at 9:30 pm |
Linda Almonte, author of the comment above, is the brave whistleblower who unmasked JP Morgan Chase’s sale of bogus credit card judgments.
The American Banker reported about her.
http://www.americanbanker.com/issues/177_49/chase-credit-cards-collections-occ-probe-linda-almonte-1047437-1.html?zkPrintable=1&nopagination=1
http://www.americanbanker.com/issues/177_52/jpmorgan-chase-credit-card-collections-1047573-1.html?zkPrintable=1&nopagination=1
Matt Taibbi told her story in Chapter 8 of his book, THE DIVIDE, and in the article linked below.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/j-p-morgan-chases-ugly-family-secrets-revealed-20120313
A post of mine on Matt Taibbi’s book
https://philebersole.wordpress.com/2014/08/28/a-predatory-business-model-based-on-lawbreaking/
The larger picture of JP Morgan Chase
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/chase-once-considered-the-good-bank-is-about-to-pay-another-massive-settlement-20130718
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December 26, 2014 at 6:50 pm |
Excellent quotation. Thank you.
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