Sanctioned highway robbery

Decades ago humorist Stephen Leacock (a Canadian Mark Twain in many respects) wrote a highly amusing little essay on how banks “rattle” him. I understood what he meant even at an early age, but by this later age I find that Canadian banks don’t rattle me one little bit – to be rattled you have to have respect for the institution, and I have none – they infuriate me.

My latest fit of pique came about following our European sojourn during which I used my ATM card many times. What a blessing to not have to go through that American Express nonsense any longer. And, with ATM card in hand I stuck it into instant tellers all over the place – in France, Belgium and England. Each time I got a little message that informed me that while Barclay’s Bank, for example, was not charging me for the transaction, what my own bank might do was entirely up to my own bank. So, naïve soul that I was, I thought I was off the hook in terms of extra charges.

You see, in Europe it is illegal for banks to charge an extra ATM fee even if the user is not dealing with his home bank. That is as it should be. In Canada, of course, with the tacit approval of successive Canadian governments, none of which would dare utter a word against the banks (because the banks are their owners, not the voters), they charge me a fee of $1.50 if I am not using an ATM associated with my own bank. The bastards.

But, adding grievous insult to fiduciary injury, when I got my first bank statement from the European trip I found that the sonsofbitches had charged me $5 for every ATM transaction. To say that I am outraged by the thievery is to state the case mildly. I am antagonistic enough that whenever I hear that somebody has pulled a successful bank job (provided nobody gets hurt or traumatized, let’s make it a safecracking, OK?) I silently applaud the crime. So, for an institution to raise so much rancor in an otherwise scrupulously law-abiding citizen indicates to me that something is wrong with the system.

Something is indeed wrong with a system in which I can be charged $1.50 or $5, depending on where I am, for the right to use a bank machine. Something is wrong with a system in which there is utterly no point in maintaining a savings account because the interest payment is so low that it’s worthless bothering. Banks in England, by the way, pay 3.5% on savings account. Something is indeed wrong when chartered banks blithely shut down branches in communities so that they can “centralize” their services, and then have the audacity to peddle the bullshit that such changes are to the benefit of customers. And something is truly wrong when I read the business pages and find that the chartered banks in this country have yet again posted huge profits in the past year.

Of course they have. What’s there to stop them? They have their hands in your pockets no matter what you do. They own your home; they charge felonious rates for their services; and they do as little as they possibly can to serve you. Oh, and by the way, they are also getting into the insurance racket. There’s another business I’ll ‘rant’ about someday.

Phew. That feels better. I’ll only close by saying that I understand perfectly why Granny stuffed her meagre savings into the mattress.