The Bank For Americans

As if Bank of America charging another $5 per month to cover the "loss" of not being able to charge retailers $0.45 for a $1.25 debit card transaction is somehow "news."

It's not.

News is an interesting word, developed from the four cardinal points North, East, West, and South (NEWS). This ain't news. B of A indeed does encompass the entire U.S., from Seattle to Miami to San Diego to Portland.

B of A has no choice but to keep revenues flowing in...to keep their ivory towers in lower Manhattan (and elsewhere) filled with $425,000 vice presidents, et al. A vice president of operations. A nice fucking title, eh? Worthy of more than a half mil per year ad infinitum, making sure the flow of money from you to them keeps "operating." Year after year.

As our manufacturing base will continue to erode due to the lifting of the bamboo curtain that used to shield all us 467,600,350 North American/European workers from the 1,460,300,600 strong labor pool in China/Indonesia/Vietnam/Pakistan, we have no choice but to align out economy on services -- and particularly financial services. Talk about grift. Think of how profitable it is to vacuum up just a nickel each month from each of these 1,460,300,600 workers, along with the other 467,600,350 OECD workers, to provide them access to their own money. This is the base for why Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, AIG, etc. exist in the first place -- to suck off a share of the world's productive output as a form of "service."

And $5 per month. Of course, as long term (beyond 45 days) thinking is absent in our nation, we never think that this is $60 per year, just for the right to access your money, alongside the $110+ you'll lose due to their myriad ways to fuck you over with excess charges, etc., like processing large debits first and not in the order they were charged, to drain your account faster so you'll overdraft on multiple items instead of just one.

As a debit card user, do you not think I should have the option to have my charges processed in the same fucking order that I charged them? Wells Fargo has been, unsurprisingly, deluging me with requests to "modify" my debit account so that I no longer simply get "denied" at the local King Soopers for a half pound of salami and instead I'm allowed to overdraft, take my purchases, and pay $35 in overdraft fees for $3.75 worth of meat.

But think. If 7 years ago I were to have used...gasp!...food stamps at the grocery, the shame and humiliation from the other customers waiting behind me would have been unbearable while the clerk spends all that time pulling them from the coupon book, processing each one, etc. Unbearable...but [clearly] tolerable. Now, EBT cards prevent that public humiliation and shame -- they are innocuous, discrete; they make it look like I'm just any other patron paying with my own money. Imagine, then, a situation where...gasp!...your ETC/Debit card doesn't work. Oh, the public humiliation! The stares, the sighs, the foot-tapping of all all! those waiting in line behind you as you swipe that card for the ninth time through the scanner only to be denied again. One might, just might, be your neighbor! Horrors! The shame and humiliation would be so great that you'd gladly pay the $35 overdraft fee in secret just to avoid such shame. You'd only feel worse knowing it's your own money rather than funded from the government. Such shame!

Bank of America excels in this arena, knowing the psyche of the American debit card user, knowing that the avoidance of the shame of a debit denial is easily worth $35+ to most Americans. That's why they are the Bank for Americans and not just the Bank of America.