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NSF fees and others

I have to say this. Perhaps, my last posts sound irritated or not peaceful. The thing of it is that, there is a difference between peaceful and just plain dumb. I am reminded of a book that I read as a child, 'Catcher In The Rye'. The kid had no real sense of boundaries and just went from one thing to another till, if I remember right, he ends up in a mental institute for a stint.

It also gets to a point in society, when the people let one thing after another occur without censor, where it is sheer madness and not a sign of lack of patience to say enough is enough. Even in Buddhism, there is what they call holy anger. There is anger that is insane, and there is also anger that brings us back to sanity. Sometimes, discerning the difference is walking a hard road--'The Razor's Edge', which is one of my favorite books.

One of my pet peeves right now, in the midst of the banking conundrums, hedge betting and insurance frauds, are the insufficient funds fees(NSF fees). Things are so busy these days, and most people don't have a lot of money. I am not going to list here the long list of reasons why someone's bank account could become overdrawn. I think most of us could list a half a dozen reasons easily.

It happened to me last week, and hello. one of the fees was for coffee at Caribou. I was putting my work check in the next day. The other was for the pump, where they take out a dollar and then the real amount a few days later, while the buck stays pending. And, then comes two checks that, I happened to have thought went through already. Crash and Burn, so now instead of a two fifty coffee--I have already stopped drinking lattes--I have a $35 tip, and, for twenty at the pump, I now have I now have thirty five in surcharges, so to speak

Has anybody thought about it that this is something like price gauging or illegal loan rates. My bank where I have had an account for the last fourteen years. Just charged me seventy for a twenty two fifty loan. It seems to me that they made about a three hundred and fifty percent profit on a 24hr loan. Isn't this illegal, folks? OK please do not give me the technicolor technical reasons why they can get away with this, so that the CEO and Board of Directors can be on the golf course, because if it is not illegal, it should be, and I vote to stop it in the name of fair trade. Isn't my twenty two dollar error less volatile and worthy of forgiveness then those across the board that did what to the world economy?

I know that the bank excuse is that they are saving us from bounced checks, and the fees associated and loss of reputation, but the bounced check fees were much less, and the only reason they do it is because they are making huge profits on it. When you think about it, if I really wanted to outsmart the bank, and it was not a mindless error in a busy world, all I had to do is go up to the ATM window and give my self a loan or a few hundred for one charge of $35. I wonder what it would take to get an accounting from all the banks about how much they are making in NSF fees.

Therefore, how about appealing to the government that this unfair practice be stopped. That banks give a grace period to customer's over three years to have a week to get their account in order a set number of times a year, which would go up the longer they were a customer--let's say twice for arguments sake and with a ceiling on how much. Then, if it goes over the ceiling of let's say up to a few hundred of unintentional dollars or allocated times per year, they only can charge their standard loan rates for every day the bank is overdrawn, so that if the person goes over the prescribed limits they are back to zero for a certain amount of time. Anybody have a problem with that? Somebody out there see my point! Anyone have a suggestion about how to stop this, because I hear a lot of people are quite tired of this! Who do we go to as concerned citizens? Anybody know? It certainly is not to the CEOs out on the golf course or Governor Blagojevich, who I hear is, instead of hiding his face in shame, still pleading innocent and off with his family to Disneyland. Wouldn't that fit him to be jailed to Disneyland for a bunch of years. Can't you picture it? Let's see. How about reporting it to the cop who would not let Texas running back RyanMoats get to the bedside of his dying mother-in-law, before she passed in the very minutes the officer was arguing with him. Well, at least, the police department apologized for that one.

All suggestions are welcome.

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