Dear Mr. Holder, et. al.,
I applaud your efforts to investigate big banks and hold them accountable for their illegal actions of the past decades. I am impressed you managed to get Citigroup to recently commit $7 billion in "penalties", $2.5 billion of which are slated to provide "relief to consumers". That is wonderful! Good luck to you as you take on Bank of America.
My question for you is how do I, as a victimized consumer, apply for said relief? You see, many of us used-to-haves out here in the real world are still trying to claw and scrape our way out of the hole these financial institutions dug for us to live inside. Some of us, like my husband and I, did everything according to the financial rules and are still being punished with no real end in sight. We lost lucrative professional employment, a home, time with our children attempting to restore what we lost for their future, and six years of our lives that we'll never get back. You might be amazed at how long it takes to recover from a setback of this nature if you had ever really had to experience it.
About $450,000 would be a break even in our house, as long as we don't include what we may have established financially during the last six years had the greed of people who will never be hungry not been the rule of the day. Do you think you could figure out a way to actually provide some "relief" to people like us? People who followed the rules and now struggle to feed their children while the bankers who broke the law continue to receive multi-million dollar bonuses and tell them they aren't worthy?
I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience on how to apply for this consumer relief for which I am certain we qualify. I am certain, because we did everything right and haven't qualified for any of the consumer relief programs as yet, so this one will be the one, right?
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincere Regards,
Carla Shutak