KATHY POSNER DEFENDS THE BANK CROOKS

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THERE COULD BE
THE
BANK OF KATHY POSNER
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Kathy Posner

If I have $50 cash in my pocket and want to buy something that costs $60; then I obviously don’t have the money to pay for it and cannot purchase the item. I could reach into the pocketbook of the woman standing next to me and take $10, but that would be stealing. I would be arrested for a crime; go to trial and even might go to jail. (Unless it were my first offense and I got probation!) By the same respect, if I write a check for $60 and only have $50 in my checking account, I am essentially stealing from the bank and should be punished in the form of an overdraft fee. And I also should pay an overdraft fee for every single check I bounce after that first one. Obviously our government does not agree with that theory. There is a bill (Consumer Overdraft Protection Fair Practices Act) pending in Congress now to limit the use of overdraft fees. Our legislative leaders have decided the fees are too high, so some banks have voluntarily cut back on overdraft fees in hopes of forestalling more government regulation of their business practices. Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase are the leaders of the pack. According to a story by Lita Epstein ( a financial author who has written more than 25 books, including The Complete Idiots Guide to Improving Your Credit Score) “both banks also agreed to cut down the number of time depositors could be charged a fee. JP Morgan will charge no more than three overdraft fees each day. Prior to this change, customers could be charged up to six fees in one day. That's more generous than Bank of America, which will limit the number of times customers can be charged overdraft fees to four times a day. Prior to this change, Bank of America used to charge fees as many as 10 times in one day.Under the old rules a Bank of America customer who was overdrawn by $5 or more could face a total of $350 (10 x $35 in one day). You may think it takes a totally incompetent to end up with 10 overdrafts it a day. But it's not as difficult as it appears. Suppose you make an error of $100 in adding in a paycheck just before your mortgage is due. The bank pays the mortgage first and then processes other checks. You wrote out nine other small checks or incurred debit charges, totaling $110. You could then be overdrawn by $10 and if all checks clear on the same day as the mortgage, you could be stuck with $350 in overdraft charges.” I realize everyone might not be as mathematically adroit as I am, but the use of a calculator makes balancing a checkbook easy enough for a four year old. Or one can use one of the many financial wizard programs (like Quickbooks) to keep track of one’s balance. People try to claim that with debit cards they don’t always remember to subtract from their balance when they use the card. That kind of stupidity is the person’s fault, not the bank’s fault. The bank should be able to “punish” the check bouncer for “stealing” money—because stealing is essential what writing a bad check is! If overdraft fees were HIGHER, people might be more careful when writing a check. By lowering the fees, banks make the punishment less painful. It is ironic that if I steal directly from your wallet, I could go to jail; but if I steal by writing a bad check, I might only have to pay $5.00. How paradoxical!

Editors Extra: We love Kathy Posner dearly, this is why we publish her in Times Square Gossip on a regular basis. And we tend to disagree with her 40 per-cent of the time, but we love her opinion on many topics, and we give you ours. Banks have tried every trick to steal our money and no one has gone to jail from Bank Of America. If Fact, two years ago I accused Bank Of America of switching bank fees around and transactions so they could nail you with a overcharge. Each and every time they denied this, even know I check my accounts almost on a daily basis. Finally they were caught last year and they settled, without admitting anything for 750 million. Meanwhile, I was out all my overdraft fees, because they gave you a very limited time to claim any monies due. And besides, the limit was 70 bucks and depending on how many people claimed the money, it could have been 10 bucks. They switched my account around so I was one cent short on a check. They charged me the 39 dollar fee and then almost doubled my interest on my credit card, which had nothing to do with my checking account. When I called to ask why, they said I was a bigger risk. Meanwhile, I got stuck with paying all that extra money on the card, even after I cancelled it, because I do not do business with crooks. You can read that story here. Meanwhile all the bailout money that Bank Of America took was not used to release credit to the consumers, it was used to open more branches to beat their competition. They have many more issues. One over a SEC civil lawsuit accusing the bank of making false and misleading statements to shareholders about bonuses promised to Merrill employees. A federal judge struck down a proposed settlement reached between Bank of America and federal regulators over outsized bonuses paid to Merrill Lynch employees. In a ruling issued Setp. 14th, U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff called the proposed $33 million penalty between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Charlotte, N.C.-based bank "neither fair, nor reasonable, nor adequate." Both parties, as a result, were ordered to head to trial, starting Feb. 1, 2010. Regulators had claimed that Bank Of America effectively lied in its proxy statement, saying it would not pay out bonuses to Merrill employees in fiscal year 2008, when, in fact, the bank authorized bonus payments of as much as $5.8 billion. Of that allowance, $3.6 billion was paid out in 2008 to more than 39,000 Merrill employees. It does not matter how many fines they pay, the end result is we pay for it all with higher bank rates. The only way to stop the greed of Bank Of America and the crooks of Wall Street is to start sending these CEO's to jail. My good friend Kathy, live a week in my shoes. I have most likely a higher credit score than you, and every credit card company has slammed me with higher rates, because of all their greed and corruption that made the rich people richer. I never got a mortgage I could not afford, I never cashed in a Cash For Clunker, I paid my bills on time and always did the right thing and I have been nailed to the wall so the rich people can still cash in on their greed !
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