Banks, and their overdraft fees, saved my life by gleefully raping me.

Banks, like insurance companies, are evil institutions.  They rape, pillage, and plunder their customers, have for years, and will for years to come.  They may be necessary institutions, but not necessarily in the form they have now.

I’m not going to outline any new banking structure, here. But what I am doing is telling you what everyone already knows, at least regular people. 

Banks fuck their customers in all kinds of ways  to make money.   Own a house?  How about a credit card? Checking account?  Debit or ATM card?  If you do, then you know what I’m talking about. 

You get fucked every time you turn around, mostly without your knowledge.  You know what I’m talking about, right? Those cool little surprises you get from your bank, showing  your balance, whatever it is, going down. Unless it’s a credit card balance, and then it goes up.  But, whatever happens, you get fucked, your bank makes money.

If one responds, as the banking industry has done, that everything the banks do is legal, and, whether they read the information or not, customers were told how they would be charged, or how rates might change, I’d say that was bullshit.  Until they use type to explain all the fees, and how they are charged, that is the same size and boldness as the type they use to advertize their services to the public, they ain’t told nobody shit, no matter what the fuck they say.

I’d also add that they can try telling that shit to someone else, it won’t work with me, not that it matters.

ATM and debit cards, and the overdraft fees that are associated with using them to overdraw your account, have been in the news for months, now. 

You know the deal, you go to the store to buy some groceries, or something, the total is $25, but you only have $15 in your account.  (You may or may not know this, of course. There are many of us who have never, not once, balanced a checking account, and just sorta guess how much money we have left.) You pass over your debit card, the dude processes it, and, even though you are $10 short of cash to pay the bill, the bank, very nicely, pays it for you. 

And then they charge you a $35 fee for doing you that favor, assuming that’s what it is. 

So your loaf of bread, pound of grapes, tube of KY, (that new stuff that heats up,) and Pop Tarts, cost you $60 instead of $25, but you got the stuff, and you weren’t embarrassed by having a small charge be denied, and then feeling like the low rent piece of irresponsible shit that you really are. 

$35 seems a small price to pay for that piece of mind, if you ask me.

I have had quite a bit of very personal and up close experience with this sort of thing over the past two years, so I’m qualified to spout off for the rest of the irresponsible, low rent pieces of shit, because I am one.

From the time I became a cripple, up until fairly recently, I lived from one financial crisis to another.  I’m not going to drag you thru it, but my financial situation got to be horrendous, on the literal edge of losing what little I have, including a place to live.

Out of necessity, and with full knowledge of how I was being charged,  I overdrew my account innumerable times, at great cost, because I could see no way to either eat or pay some bill that absolutely needed to be paid.  (By the way, the only credit I carry is a car payment. Everything else is electricity, internet, garbage…that sort of thing.)

I have no idea how much money I blew like that, riding in the red at the bank, until one of my meager disability checks came in and was nearly swallowed up by the minus sign, only to begin again after the new check was eaten up. It was a lot.

Still, I’d have drown…completely and unutterably gone down…as in homeless…if it wasn’t for being able to overrun my account, and loans from friends who were willing to wait until I had a money flow established to be paid back.

I  loved the Bank of the West for ass fucking me deep and hard, because without me paying them to rape me, my daughter would have been hungry many times, and we would both probably be living at some fucking rescue mission or some damned thing, having to listen to how Jesus loves us before we got our baloney sammich and carton of milk…and, oh by the way, homeless or not, hungry or not, I am NOT drinking the watery secretions from some barnyard animal’s tit. FUCK YOU, Jesus, I’ll pass, if it’s all same to you.

The practice, as saving as it was for us, was, nevertheless, disgustingly evil. 

Up until very recently, the banks were allowed to charge the debit to your account in any order they chose to, regardless of the order in which the transactions actually took place.  They could, for example, charge a large debit first, thus depleting your account, then charge the five purchases you made prior to that large one…only now there is no money for them, so the bank goes ahead and pays them for you, charging $35 a pop. They create an extra $175 over what you should really owe them, $35.

They can’t do that anymore. 

Being one of the scum of society, and having to dance-bank like that is no picnic, and when they were allowed to charge in that manner, it was nearly unbearable.

Still, I made it thru to where I am economically, now…safe and normal…because those lousy cocksuckers at Bank of the West dry fucked me, and then wiped their dicks on my dress.

And I thank them for it.