A Deal Is a Deal, Right?

"A deal is a deal." That's the promise that was made to credit card customers by Citigroup, the Wall Street financial conglomerate that even used the phrase last year as an advertising slogan to promote a new, consumer-friendly credit card policy. Citigroup said that if people took its card, the terms of the agreement would not change for two years.

Believe it or not, this minimal concession to commercial integrity was considered a big deal, because banks are notorious for jacking up customers' credit card rates whenever they feel like it. Citigroup was pledging to forego the "any time, for any reason" clause that banks write into their fine-print agreements. It also abandoned the "universal default" clause that lenders commonly use to raise your credit card rates if you're late paying a bill — any bill, even one not charged to your card.

Of course, this powerhouse bank was not making these moves out of the goodness of its corporate heart or because of some sudden discovery of business ethics. No, it was responding to consumer outrage that had reached all the way to Congress, where lawmakers were considering new regulations to stop these rip-off practices. Spouting its "deal is a deal" plan in a congressional hearing last year, Citigroup executives deflected the stricter regulations.

But that was then. Now that Congress has gone away, and now that Citigroup finds itself in a financial crunch due to bad executive decisions, the bank says that it didn't literally mean that a deal is a deal. It was an advertising slogan, not a blood oath — so Citigroup is reneging.

To add insult to injury, Citigroup blames consumers for its abandonment of the "deal." It was expecting that a flood of people would switch to its card — but, apparently, consumers are not as gullible as Congress is about promises from Wall Street bankers.

FEMA Strikes Again

Martha Kegel thought she'd seen it all — the horror of the flooding of New Orleans, the callousness and incompetence of George W's response, the scandal of people still left homeless three years after the storm.

Then she learned something that truly shocked her.

Kegel heads a nonprofit group called Unity of Greater New Orleans, striving on a meager budget to help the displaced set up households. So she was stunned to hear that Bush's Federal Emergency Management Agency had recently given away $85 million worth of bedding, kitchen equipment, clothing, mops and brooms, cleansers, first-aid kits, and other family necessities. "These are exactly the items that we are desperately seeking donations of right now — basic kitchen (and) household supplies," said an exasperated Kegel.

It turns out that FEMA had such essentials sitting in warehouses for the past two years. But astonishingly, the perpetually clueless officials at FEMA decided this year that the supplies were no longer needed in the storm-wracked area. "We determined that they were excess to FEMA's needs," an agency spokesman curtly told CNN reporters. "Therefore, they are being excessed from FEMA's inventory."

One hundred twenty-one truckloads of FEMA's "excess," so desperately needed by hard-hit families in the Crescent City, have been doled out instead to the Homeland Security Department, the Air Force and other agencies. As for the people of New Orleans, FEMA claims ignorance, saying its officials simply didn't know that there was still a need there.

Excuse me, but this is our nation's emergency agency. It has an $8.2 billion annual budget. Aren't these officials supposed to know? Besides, Kegel says that FEMA did know, because her group told the agency's officials again and again that it was in urgent need of such supplies — but no one mentioned that tons of them were stored away uselessly in a FEMA warehouse.

To find out more about Jim Hightower, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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