You're totally right about big banks, they don't care about the little man. When I moved up here in Oct. I called both Bank Boston and BayBank, the two giants. I think it was BayBank that wanted me to pay them $12 a month for checking and I still had to have $500 minimum in my account. I don't even think I asked about other charges. I did ask the woman from the bank what they were giving me for that extra $144, especially considering I was depositing my check electronically, for which most banks reward you. She had no answer other than "Those are our standard fees". Unless you sink a ton of money into one of their shitty 4.895% 6 month CD's which they don't even buy for you. They take your cash to Wall Street, make 12-25% on some high risk fund or stock, and then pay you back your measly 4.895%. They charge you for when they fuck up, which judging by how high ATM fees have climbed, must be often. Later that day I found a small local town bank, with four branches, who gave me free checking for my direct deposit, had a bank manager who sat down with me to set up my new account, and who has even gone so far as to cover me for a check I bounced; they paid the check so it didn't bounce, but still charged me a $18 bounce fee. I thought that was fair. Two months after I opened my account I got my second balance statement. There were two ATM withdrawals for $20 each that I didn't make, and two deposits for $20 to replace the money. They were sequenced withdrawal, deposit, withdrawal, deposit. It seems BayBank had been running a test, had screwed up and had mistakenly billed several hundred people for withdrawals they hadn't made. And they had done it twice in a row. Morons.

F. Amos Jester
Boston, Mass.

There's very low levels of the Inferno waiting for the managers of banks like that. Of course, if I had cash, I'd be just as much of a jerk. But enough about me. -ed.

As any semi-educated person knows, the Glass-Steagall Act prohibits banks from investing deposits in the stock market.

Of course, what they really do is go to a bookie and bet it all on the Marlins.

--Mr. Anal
(who incidentally is smart enough not to have a bank account, and wealthy enough not to need one)

Ah, yet another Spite war of words commences. Still, we agree with the Jester in regard to his underlying moral principle, if not the details of his financial one. And we're still betting on Cleveland.

Ouch. Well it's not surprising to me that I finally said something I couldn't back up. Either way my point was that the banks were making much more money then they were giving back on investments, some of which I'm sure don't fall within the rules. Even now banks are pushing to be allowed to sell insurance and have made a habit of trading mortgages like baseball cards; bad habits are the hardest to break. Banks are currently trying to rewrite the laws on what they can and cannot do. They want to go back to the grand old days of the 1920s and 30s, and any semi-educated person knows where that lead us to. I may not know all the ins and outs of bank law, but I'm not naive enough to believe it when these institutions assure me that it can "never happen again". Witness this weeks Hong Kong and Domestic stock market dips if you want proof of lemming like behavior only these days the lead lemming is a Pentium, and it doesn't care if there is a roof over its head or bread on its table.

F. Amos Jester

Mr. Anal replied to this letter, too. But we've had enough! If either of you truly want the last word, you'll have to fight it out on the message board! - ed.