Letter to ING Direct from a NetBank Customer

Dear ING Direct,

You recently took over my personal and corporate banking business when you acquired the assets of failed NetBank.

. . . You promised to send out a welcome package via regular mail. While waiting, I researched you online. I discovered your random account closures and other questionable treatment of customers. But you assured me you would not close an account due to imperfect credit, so I kept waiting.

I was expecting logins, ATM cards and debit cards. Instead, you sent me another sales email, but this time with a footnote that all my ATM and debit cards would go dark on November 23rd!

I like that you gave notice, unlike when you closed my money market account. I didn’t realize it was gone until I tried to make a deposit.

Regards,

George Donnelly

Former NetBank depositor

P.S. You really ought to put “BETA” next to the logo on your website until you figure out what you’re doing.

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The big push by Ronald Reagan toward privatization and deregulation (PD) was a neocon dream come true. Granted, it was a mere baby in his first term and barely a toddler by the time Reagan left office.

George Bush the First went along with the downsizing of America on his way to actually learning what a bar-code was. GB First was intrigued with how life functioned at the supermarket check-out register. Imagine, a thousand points of light in a single grocery store. Who knew?

Bill Clinton tried to enroll PD as a youngster in the kindergarden of economic reality, but it was never an even fight. Though he balanced a budget and paid down a hunk of national debt in the process, the nation was convinced to watch the pea under the shell--the little blue dress.

Then along came Bush II and like a spoiled brat intimidating his parents, PD threw tantrums, got hooked on speed, wrecked the car and stayed out past curfew. Hatching plans and diagrams, Privatization and Deregulation enabled Blackwater and the myriad 'ownership' scams that have made government smaller.

So government got smaller. So small the Army can't feed itself anymore without Halliburton to hold the spoon. So small that the only people able to squeeze into a congressman's office are lobbyists. Small enough that it only costs $6 million to run a senatorial campaign.

The goal was achieved (or at least well begun) with PD out there on the mean streets, ransacking the neighborhood. Drug dealers normally go to jail for that and PD was dealing fear. Sooner or later they get caught or some accomplice plea-bargains them into prison.

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