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" (Optional soundtrack to this blog post...)      Elsewhere in the big casino today, beyond the Bernanke Dome, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau hung its first big trophy head on the wall. I am open to arguments that say that a $140 million refund is boutonniere money for most of these folks, but it&amp;#039;s a considerable number for the rest of us, and the documentation behind the fine is yet more evidence that, if Ben Bernanke is really worried about the effect on the economy of a &amp;quot;loss of confidence,&amp;quot; he ought to stop looking in the suites to find it. We begin. (Ed. Note: Bold-face type for bald-faced liars.) The CFPB says it found that Capital One&amp;#039;s call center vendors pressured or misled consumers into paying for such services as payment protection and credit monitoring when they activated their cards. Consumers weren&amp;#039;t told these add-ons were optional, the CFPB says. And, the agency says, sometimes consumers were automatically enrolled in these programs without their approval and then had trouble canceling the services after being billed for them.  This is exactly what Elizabeth Warren calls the &amp;quot;tricks and traps&amp;quot; inherent in every mortgage and in the fine print of every credit-card statement. In its own sleazy way, because the economy has forced so many Americans to buy on credit, this is naked profiteering. It was stealing the pencils out of a blind man&amp;#039;s cup. Capitol One, of course, is terrible sorry. &amp;quot;We are accountable for the actions that vendors take on our behalf,&amp;quot; said Ryan Schneider, President of Capital One&amp;#039;s Card business. &amp;quot;These marketing calls were inconsistent with the explicit instructions we provided to agents for how these products should be sold. We apologize to those customers who were impacted and we are committed to making it right.&amp;quot;  Yeah, a bunch of guys in marketing dreamed up this scheme and a bunch of kids at a call center in Bangalore carried it out. That dog will surely hunt. Some people are saying that this thing will boost Warren campaign for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts. That would simply be gravy. Making them pay and making them squirm is its own reward. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a14894/capital-one-cfpb-10786979/>