JP Morgan: Food Stamps Welfare Queen

From The Economic Collapse Blog:

"JP Morgan is the largest processor of food stamp benefits in the United States. JP Morgan has contracted to provide food stamp debit cards in 26 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. JP Morgan is paid for each case that it handles, so that means that the more Americans that go on food stamps, the more profits JP Morgan makes. Yes, you read that correctly. When the number of Americans on food stamps goes up, JP Morgan makes more money... Considering the fact that the number of Americans on food stamps has exploded from 26 million in 2007 to 43 million today, one can only imagine how much JP Morgan's profits in this area have soared. But doesn't this give JP Morgan an incentive to keep the number of Americans enrolled in the food stamp program as high as possible?"

The author then asks:

"So is this what America is turning into?

A place where tens of millions of the unemployed and the working poor crawl over to Wal-Mart and the dollar store every month to use the food stamp debit cards provided to them by JP Morgan?"

But wait, there's more:

"Apparently states have found that they can save millions of dollars by 'outsourcing' the provision of these benefits to big financial firms like JP Morgan.

So what happens if you have a problem with your food stamp debit card?

Well, you call up a JP Morgan service center. When you do this, there is a very good chance that you are going to be helped by a JP Morgan call center employee in India.

That's right - it turns out that JP Morgan is saving money by 'outsourcing' food stamp customer service calls to India.

When ABC News asked JP Morgan about this, the company would not tell ABC News which states have customer service calls sent to India and which states have them handled inside the United States....

JP Morgan is the only one today still operating public-assistance call centers overseas. The company refused to say which states had calls routed to India and which ones had calls stay domestically. That decision, the company said, was often left up to the individual states."

The More Americans That Go On Food Stamps The More Money JP Morgan Makes
January 19th, 2011
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-more-americans-that-go-on-food-stamps-the-more-money-jp-morgan-makes