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Remember the scene from “Network” where the actor encourages everyone watching to go to the window, open it, and yell: “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore”?

Well if that’s how you feel about the way your bank, your broker, your government, whatever, has been treating you, then make your New Year’s resolution all about fighting back and not taking it any more.

Start with the banks!

Tired of having your credit card rates and fees bumped up for no reason?  The worst offenders appear to be Citibank and Bank of America. Dump ’em!  If you can’t pay off your balances, transfer them.  Maybe then Citi will get the message that raising their rates ahead of consumer protections is just plain wrong, and perhaps Bank of America will stop issuing credit cards to illegal aliens who skip out on their balances leaving good customers to absorb the debt through higher fees. Your bailout dollars saved their butts, and this is how they are thanking you.

Feel like your financial advisor or broker has left you and your money to die on third base while he or she goes out hunting for the next “big fish” to fry? Demand that your advisor give you a written fiduciary contract that requires him or her to put your interests first. Check their licenses and credentials, even if you’ve been with them for decades.

You wouldn’t let a drug salesman operate on your brain, would you? You’d demand a qualified surgeon with lots of experience, training and certifications.  You’d check their records. So why are you letting an insurance salesman with a radio show handle your money?  Make this the year you find out whether your goals and aspirations come before his or hers. Demand to see licenses, securities registrations and broker-check reports!

Ever wonder why you are not getting anything of value from your senators and representatives at both the state and federal level? Feel like the politicians who claim to represent you have totally lost touch with reality? Tired of watching them give themselves pay raises and benefits for doing pretty much nothing while spending your hard-earned tax dollars like sailors on liberty?  Well, if you don’t want to go to the window and simply yell, make this the year you get to the polls and vote.

You get the opportunity to fire the bums who are pretending to run a country of the people, for the people, by the people. They’re screwing the people! They’re only thinking of their fat pensions. Make or buy a bumper sticker that says “Re-elect No One” and be sure to vote that way.

A long time ago, the unwritten law of the land was “the customer is always right.”

Somewhere along the way, we Americans have lost sight of the fact that “we are the customer,” at the bank, at the brokerage house and at home in our state and country. It’s time to stop just accepting the garbage we are being handed. Garbage rates and fees from our banks, garbage service from our financial institutions and garbage representation in our government.  Time to take out the “garbage.” Return America to its citizens in 2010.

Tags: bailout, consumer protections, credit cards, goals and aspirations, new year

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