| Howard's Views | ||||
| LETTERS TO CEOs
Below is a copy of my letter to Kenneth Chennault, CEO of American Express in 2002
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Like millions of American business owners, I had lost my independence, lost my battle to stay relatively free to American Express and its cohorts in this scheme, one based upon common bribery. Now I had a whole slew of unsavory partners who virtually controlled my business, their long slippery manicured fingers sliding stealthily into my pockets almost every time I made a sale and deducting their percentage right off the top. They can cancel a sale and make a refund to a client, whether warranted or not. They can denude your bank account in an instant. Most of America's businesses wear these same chains, The Credit/Charge Card Cartel holds us all as virtual slaves to their financial greed, a partnership made in Hell by America's bankers, one trustingly entered into by the retailers until betrayed by Judas in the form of a Cartel. | ||||
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AMERICAN AIRLINES IS A PARTNER IN A GIGANTIC FRAUD AGAINST AMERICAN BUSINESS OWNERS! June 28, 2002Mr. Don Carty, CEO American Airlines P.O. Box 619616DFW Airport, TX 75261-9619 Dear Mr. Carty: My last letter to you, on May 2nd, obviously did not reach your desk, hence the duplication below. Attached is some additional information for your attention. By the way, you should drop in on some car dealers and casually bring up the subject of “air miles” and find out their opinions of what YOUR Corporation, Citibank and Wells Fargo, etc., are doing to small businesses today. Our banking charges are going through the roof. One business owner (restaurant) said to me the other day, “Howard, it’s terrible; my bank charges exceeded my profit this last year! That’s what is known as a “royal shafting.” Excuse me, that’s WWII jargon, but fairly accurate for this age. Our banking charges are going through the roof. One business owner (restaurant) said to me the other day, “Howard, my bank charges exceeded my profit this last year. Repeat of my letter of May 5, 2002: The AAdvantage Visa credit card, when used outside of the American Airlines system, in other words, making purchases of goods and merchandise in order to accumulate air mileage, is a system of bribery that steals profits from other businesses. As such, it is immoral, if not illegal, and especially rapes small businesses. In order to make this system of bribery work, it must take unfair advantage of businesses outside of the conspirators (such as Citibank and American Airlines). For credit cards to work, there is a critical third party besides the issuer, such as Citibank, the cardholder (consumer), and that is the merchant supplying the goods or services. The increased use of credit cards due to this system of bribing cardholders with air mileage increases his bank costs (MDR) tremendously and robs him of a substantial part of his profits. I’ve studied this matter carefully for ten years, and watched as the use of credit cards for air mileage and other benefits have increased merchant’s costs by at least 200%, and in many cases to more than 300%. One friend, with a local business, reports that his December credit cards costs have gone from $400 to almost $1500, or more than 300%, while sales have increased approximately 30%. This appears to be a conspiracy to defraud other businesses. I have begun notifying the Attorney General’s office in each state of this problem. American Airlines may not be fully aware of the fraud involved, as Citibank and other banking institutions are certain to be, but this letter is a step to bring it to your immediate attention. Citibank is not paying you for those air miles out of their pockets! Neither is the consumer. The money for those air miles comes directly out of the business owners’ pockets. Why should it? This information is on my Website, and the names of all airlines cooperating in this are going to be listed as part of the group involved in fraud against retail business owners. While this system may have been set up long before you took over as CEO of American Airlines, you should be informed of the problem and the damage it does to other businesses. Nothing is free. Citibank, headed by Sanford Weill, is hoodwinking the public and raping American businesses from coast to coast for billions of dollars annually with this clever scheme. All you need do is crunch the numbers and you’ll see the scope of the fraud against us. As an example, an acquaintance recently told me that he and his wife had cashed in 50,000 miles (or points), gotten a flight to Denmark and back, first class, and laid out less than a thousand dollars (part of it was $450 to buy 15,000 points for his wife). He bragged that he pays only a small annual fee for his card, nothing more, not a penny in interest, not a dime in overlimit fees or late fees. Tell me, how can a man get so much ‘free,” amounting to several thousand dollars, for simply a sixty dollar fee for a credit card? Who paid for it? You know the answer full well; men and women who own businesses, such as mine, paying 2% out of every sale on Visa or 4% on an American Express card! It’s a scam of major proportions, a fraud against business owners. To me it appears to be a conspiracy to defraud between corporations, such as American Airlines and American Express, Citibank, MBNA, Capital One, etc. How does it appear to you? Sincerely yours,
Howard E. Morseburg CONCLUSION: AMERICAN AIRLINES IS ACTING IN COLLUSION WITH BANKS IN A CREDIT CARD SCHEME THAT DEFRAUDS RETAIL BUSINESS OWNERS. Copy: Wall Street Journal Los Angeles Times Santa Barbara News Press New York Times San Francisco Examiner Seattle Times Chicago Tribune St. Louis Dispatch San Diego Union | ||||
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May 31, 20077 Mr. Ken I. Chennault, CEO American Express Corp. AMERICAN EXPRESS THE MOST HATED NAME BY THE RETAIL TRADE! Dear Mr. Chennault: This afternoon I listened to the full 49 minute video of your speech given at the reunion of the Harvard Law School Class of 1976.
It was an informative and inspiring talk, especially when you spoke about business principles. Would that we all could hear such encouraging words about business ethics and principles now and then, because it might serve to warn those who are contemplating or developing schemes that harm others, often to their regret later on. Witness the many who have faced American juries in recent years and then spent time in prison because of their lapses and their greed, when indeed, their wealth was beyond the understanding of many ordinary people.
Yep, it all sounded good, but as far as I’m concerned it was hogwash. Your company, American Express, has the most hated name to those in the retail trade today, as it has been for many years. In fact, I’ve never heard a positive word about accepting a plastic card with your company name on it from a retailer in my many years in business or since my retirement. . . in discussions about business with shop owners in this area. It is impossible that it be any different elsewhere, as figures and percentages do not change from one city to another, one county to another or one state to another.
The integrity and business principles you spoke about should not include continuous and systematic acts of bribery by American Express. Integrity should not include the systematic defrauding of business owners of their profits through such acts of bribery. Integrity should not be the use and enforcement of onerous contracts that give unequal weight and advantages to one side to the detriment and financial disadvantage of the other.
These are all failures, as I see them, on the part of
American Ex-cess in their relationship with It is this continuous and systematic form of bribery (Awards Program) that, since 1992, has scammed business owners out of 8% to 15% of their profits on each sale involving an American Express card in ever escalating monthly bank charges.
In 1995 I placed a sign in the window of my business saying, I FIRED AMERICAN EXPRESS FROM MY BUSINESS, and at that time I wrote to Mr. Richard E. Braddock, CEO of your company stating my reason for doing so and sending it by Fed Ex. Few retailers are willing to go as far as I did, unfortunately, and so they continue to allow American Ex-cess to raid their profits. Most who do drop American Ex-cess from the list of cards they will accept do so quietly, without fanfare, but they do it for the same reason that I did, the use of bribery as well as Ex-cessive fees for processing the cards. I believe my actions were correct then, as they would be for the same criminal actions today, using bribery to remove as much as possible free choice by the American Express cardholders.
A couple of days after I sent my letter off, a junior executive called from American Express headquarters and asked if I would reconsider my decion, but when I asked him to give me a reason why I should, he could not give me an answer. It was a lame effort on his part and that ended my business relationship with A.E. In my opinion your personal code of conduct is not the same code of conduct that your company has long followed; if all corporate leaders listened to your message and then followed such a code we'd all be a lot better off.
My views are further explained on my website, www.howardsviews.com . Perhaps you can have one of
your subordinates read them over and report back to you. Take a good look at the
other side of the coin and see how the guys who are getting stuck
with those fees feel about charge and credit card corporations
raiding their profits.
It’s not very scholarly, but then, it is not intended to
be. It's just straight talk, man to man.
Sincerely yours,
Howard E. Morseburg
To the right, Kenneth Chennault, CEO of American Express. Part and parcel of the Credit/Charge Card Cartel, he wields a lot of clout in the financial world. At the same time, his corporation is one of those involved in a 1991 conspiracy by a group of bankers that was formed in order to extort billions from the retail business community through a systematic form of bribery. Bribery can be legal or illegal. Extortion can be legal or illegal. The idea was to do it in such a way that the law could not intercede or nullify the plans laid between the parties involved, and thus the chokehold on retailers was successful. Greed won out.
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Bribery: |
extort: to gain or draw from by compulsion. (Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary). | |||
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to: Angelo R. Mozilo, CEO COUNTRYWIDE FINANCIAL CORPORATION March 8, 2008 Dear Mr. Mozilo: SUB-PRIME LOANS: THE CHICKENS ALWAYS COME HOME TO ROOST. I've been following the story of your corporations fall from grace, and the huge drop in stock prices and company valuation over the past several months, and even for one as un- savvy as I am about the Stock Market, I can say that the actions which the LA Times and WS Journal report would also arouse my suspicions about the sequence of events and, would it be proper to say, your integrity? Wouldn't the same questions come to your mind, especially after Enron, and a few others in recent years? You wouldn't be the only one who has ever been suspected or even accused of dumping stock when there is a possibility that it is going to take a nose dive, no, not by a long shot, Angelo. I mean, after all, the big boys in your league wouldn't think of taking a chance on getting caught doing such a thing, would they? It's only pocket change in that league, a hundred and forty-one million dollars, just chump change. To me, an outsider, it seems that the real chumps are the ones who had faith in Countrywide Financial Corp., and in your leadership. Something was abysmally wrong for a long time, because such severe losses cannot happen overnight; they are a long time in coming, and the signs that something was going wrong must have been evident for many months, not just a matter of days or weeks. If you didn't have better grasp on things and more foresight than that, then when your Board of Directors went against the recommendations about your pay package they used very poor judgment and should bear some responsibility for it. Just sitting here in my little cubby-hole of an office and thinking about it, I was thinking, just how astute can you be about financial matters if you were running the company, had the balance sheets on an almost daily basis, knew that a good portion of your loans made were tenuous at best, that any slight drop in the housing market would have an immediate effect upon that balance sheet, and then when the news reports all showed this decline you still didn't know what was coming . . . and just casually planned your retirement by cashing in your chips for $141 million. Whew. After all, a casual reading of the history of Countrywide and I'd say that your net worth must have been in the area of a couple hundred million before that, and that's not even checking with Forbes, just using basic arithmetic to hazard a guess. Come on, Angelo, you've got ten fingers and ten toes. Take off your shoes and socks (assuming you wear them) if need be and use your digits to do some simple arithmetic. One little piggy, two little piggies. There are always severe problems with high risk loans, no matter what interest they are paying, always. If you didn't know that to begin with, that would have been abject stupidity. So, I assume you knew, because you don't run an outfit that large with "stupid" written in red on your forehead. Yet, those financial experts who invested so heavily in your company or recommended it to others may have had stupidity in their family genes, because over the years I've observed that these high-risk ventures do collapse and the ones who make the real money are those who buy them for a dime on the dollar after the fall. No stock market, no housing market, no commodities market, and no investments have ever kept climbing, climbing without a day of reckoning. If you did not know that it was due to arrive one day, then perhaps I should get out that red marking pen and hand it to you. Countrywide's stock today is valued at 11% of what it was in February of 2007, so there had to be some signs that the loan portfolio was a canoe with a big hole in the bottom, there had to be knowledge somewhere along the line that too many loans were simply bad loans, complicity among managers and sales force and appraisers, corporate officers who were either derelict in their duties or encouraging wrongful acts. $23 billion does not simply vanish, 89% of the value of the corporation in early 2007. Don't you have a sign on your desk that says, "The Buck Stops here!"? Well, my interest in your company, thank goodness, is not because of any stock investments, but because I always perceived Countrywide as just another predatory lender, a bottom feeder off the detritus left behind by the Credit Card Cartel. Your business was successful to a point, but it could only go so far because of the heavily indebted working men and women in this nation, deep in debt due to the fraudulent nature of the banking and credit card industry today. Those predators led to the development and growth of another class of predators, those in the mortgage loan industry. Now,
after the losses to stockholders of Countrywide already at $23
billions, one man walks away with another one hundred and forty-one
million dollars to add to his already substantial fortune of
millions in homes and other investments. Rep. Henry Waxman
says only, "You had good timing". I'd have to agree. It's
never enough, though, is it Angelo, mi compadre. When Bank of America picked up the pieces, there must have been a rattling in the grave of A. P. Giannini, as he rolled over in anguish for all those little people who were affected, as the bank he founded has become one of the largest predators in the financial world today, using plastic at its favorite tool. (Here's a picture of Amadeo Peter Giannini in 1929). Now that man was a banker, and a good one. Too bad you don't have his genes. Kindest personal regards, Howard E. Morseburg
MARCH 8, 2008
L.A. Times:
The nation's revolving debt rose to $2.52 trillion. Credit card charges rose by $5.9 billion in Jan. 2008 | ||||
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STUPIDITY:
SUB-PRIME LOANS ABJECT STUPIDITY - SUB-PRIME LOANS AS INVESTMENTS CRIMINAL STUPIDITY - SUB-PRIME LOANS TO DELINQUENT DEBTORS | ||||
This is the condition of
America's Business Owners, living in chains that have been forged by
the Charge/Credit Card Cartel. Each month, inexorably,
profits are drained from retailers bank accounts by this cruel and
inhuman system of enslavement, and that it is, Economic
Slavery. 
Better timing, selling a little bit sooner and you'd really have
cleaned up.
Countrywide has a remarkable Board of
Directors though, because they're still riding in the same Roller
Coaster car with you, sitting in rows right behind you.Copyright © 2006 Howard's Views. All Rights Reserved.