There’s nothing I despise more than bankers. I don’t mean the little guys who help me deposit checks or open accounts. I mean the guys in charge who caused the recession and do whatever they can to squeeze as much money out of us any way they can whenever they can however they can.
So here’s an article in the New York Times that gives us the good news that thousands of bankers got huge bonuses last year (and traders, too, let’s not forget traders and the great service they do and the value they add to our society and what fine humanitarians they are):
At least 4,793 bankers and traders were paid more than $1 million in bonuses last year even as profits at the biggest banks dwindled and they accepted tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer money, according to a report released on Thursday by the New York attorney general’s office.
The other day I got a credit card bill. Buried in there was a $39 charge because I was a day late paying. I don’t think I was, but so says the statement, and so I’m out 39 bucks. And they didn’t put it anywhere that I could see it, lest I might dispute it. They just buried it with the other transactions.
Then we get another bill from another bank, this time my wife’s business account. They charged us an $89 fee because…well. It’ hard to say why for sure. There was some kind of problem when we moved money between two accounts at the bank and it caused them so much trouble, they were forced to charge us $89, even though we at no time had a shortage of funds and all we were doing was moving money between accounts at their bank in person by hand. Eighty nine dollars.
I receive, on a regular basis, credit card checks offering me great low interest rates, sometimes even zero, for six months if I’ll just use the checks. It’s their way of saying thanks. It’s their way of letting me know they value my business. They’re suggesting I treat myself to a vacation, or some other large expense, because I work hard and I deserve it, and they really want me to have some fun.
There are some asterisks, of course, and some fine print, and somewhere buried they mention that oh, by the way, there’s a 4% transaction fee. In other words, transfer $4000 bucks and they’ll take $160. Transfer ten grand and they’ll take $400. They’re taking their interest up front. So it’s not really free money, and they’re not really doing me a giant favor, and they don’t really give damn whether I take a vacation or rot, as long as they can squeeze some bucks out of me and hook me for a big debt that they’re hoping I can’t pay before they jack the right up as high as they legally can.
The other day I needed cash. I was nowhere near my own bank, so I went to a bank machine outside the grocery store. They said they were happy to give me the $20 I wanted, but that of course, they would have to extract $3 for their troubles. Three dollars to spit my own money out of their little machine and into my hands. Three dollars for an automated system to whiz some information from one computer to another, update a database, and lower a number representing what little money I have in the bank. Three dollars of pure stolen profit.
And perhaps most infuriating of all is this. I received two checks on one day. Both were from banks that just wanted to make my life better by giving me a little money. And both had fine print on the back that said by cashing these checks I was agreeing to a credit protection program, or some nonsense like that, which would thenceforth cost me a monthly fee that would very quickly cost me much more than the puny checks they sent me to trick me into signing up for a useless program that would never do me any good, but would provide the bank with lots more stolen money from gullible consumers.
Banks suck. They truly do try to steal your money, not in some grand theft sort of way, but in small insidious ways that when multipled by millions of customers just keep the ill-gotten gains pouring in.
Actually it’s not the banks that suck. It’s the bankers that run them and the slimy bastards they pay to come up with schemes like the phoney check that gets you the useless protection.
And 4,793 of these rich clowns who were more responsible than anyone else for bringing this recession down on us got paid over a million bucks in bonuses last year for being such great bankers. Oh yeah, and we gave them billions of dollars of government money so they could keep up the good work.
Congratulations, bankers. You’re fine Americans and great human beings.
