Virtual Money Mongers

Today, I did some bookkeeping. Yeah! I know there are people in the world that enjoy working with numbers. I’m not one of them.

Oh, I can do it and I don’t hate it, but I always end up feeling a little like a sucker by the time I’ve reconciled my checking accounts.

For instance, one of my accounts pays interest on credit balances of 1.55%. However, should I go into deficit, it charges 3.5% interest. What this financial institution is saying to me is, “Our money is worth more than yours.”

How can that be? My money is not in Guatemalan quetzals. 

It’s not as if they have a little box somewhere with my exact balance
sitting there in shiny new bills waiting for me to call upon my reserves. There is no little elf that visits all the little boxes once a month and either takes or leaves cash.

Keep real money in your box and they tip you 1.55% at the end of the month for letting them wheel and deal with your assets to make more profit for said corporation. If they show up at your little box and it has an “I owe you” in it, they don’t rewrite the note with a bigger number on it and tuck it back in your box.

 No, they leverage my deposit, along with all the other deposits, to make more virtual money. Realistically, that’s all financial institutions do. They make virtual money and move it around in data bases taking from the poor and giving to the rich. I know they talk about bank products, but that’s just a ruse.

There is no way that my money isn’t making them more virtual money. They are using it and paying me less than they would make me pay if I use theirs. That’s just plain greedy and dishonest.

I can hear the bankers saying but we have administrative costs! We manage your money for you and it takes people, time, electricity and data storage space!

I think chocolate should be
legal tender

BS. I do two transactions a month at the most. Meanwhile, bank corp makes at least 3.5% on my money by lending it to someone else. Maybe if they had little boxes and elves, but they don’t. This bank in particular doesn’t even have banks!

For the moment, I am a rare First World person. I have no debt. Yes, we walk among you and you cannot identify us by looks. We are so rare that most people don’t have the opportunity to even consider how badly financial institutions rip them off.

I made an extra transaction in my business account last month – cost me $2. Really? That financial institution must be exhausted from my flurry of 6 transactions last month. Whew! Glad they made it through.Must have been touch and go for a bit.

I paid my visa on-line (so convenient you know), but it took the two financial institutions four days to process the transaction. That made me one day late on my visa payment. So, Visa charged me one month interest at 19.99%.

Tell me why that’s legal?

This is great. This has value.
This is a product made by an artist.
It has beauty, function and longevity.

There are a many things about this society we created that catch my notice. Some of them are great.

Financial institutions are not one of the great things. They may have been in my youth, but they have transformed into 

Decepticons.