Screw Your Bank? I'm Not Winning This Thing

Pizza box, pink cake,and dog turds? You talkin' to me?

Do you people at Business Week mean to tell me that the Federal Reserve was established on HOWARD HUGHES' 8th birthday? And, his grandson--that's me--was once married to a woman who could get money out of an early ATM faster than a chain smoker can flick his Bic. It's all true, and "they" sure hate it, don't they? Hmm..."they," "we," and "it." Sports fans, one of the first mandates of advanced spycatching is finding out who they are, and I'm kind of stuck in the 300-level college class, so to speak.

It really reached a zenith last weekend, when the U.K./U.S.A.'s DUDLEY DORIGHT went out to blow a fag--no, not like that--BTW, is Paris Hilton accompanying me to the 2010 Kentucky Derby, or not? I've got some Kentucky State Police stories as we drive to SHANNON'S at the posed speed limit for a late dinner. Anyway, having schlepped around the checks from bank to Fed, I already knew the ATM, check card, and debit card scam was huge from its inception. How about the time liberal Massachusetts fascists were, as momma said, "Playing me crazy," at the hippie food store when I asked, "Can I get cash back from a debit card?"

Why, the little dressed-in-black anarchist looked at me all cuckoo and and it took five full minutes of "The parrot is dead, the bird is not dead," conversation to establish my "wholly" too expensive food purchase could be capped with a more colorful Hank Paulson rendering of ANDREW JACKSON. Yes, swipe the debit card, enter the PIN, get some cash, and guess what? Your bank is making money.

Do you really think the strip mall neo-bank with no big vault makes anything holding on to your money? No, pilgrims! Lending it out for a Chevy Malibu, a car so ugly, they can't give it away? No! The bank makes money on debit & credit card swiping, and many, many fees when your direct deposit suspiciously posts after the string of debits you rang-up in the 24 hours before payday.

Ooops! That's $25 for being bad, and another $25 for being named Hughes, and when we get to $50 a pop, the non-aviator guy is going to catch the bank that sent billions overseas to be broken-up into smaller amounts and be sent to places like Sun Trust Bank in sunny Florida where un-named she's say they can't keep up with the South Beach crowd, but they have been known to run around Beirut? Go figure, and why was that genetically poor speller Paris Hilton in the United Arab Emirates? Just wondering.

Back to banks, it's no wonder they were offering fabulous prizes for not entering your PIN # and signing your name for a debit transaction, because this allows:

1. The bank to keep your money for a few more days.

2. The bank to charge a 2% fee to the merchant.

3. You to check your balance and think you still have some money.

4. And, given #3, you will buy more stuff, and ZAP, 25+25= $50 more to the bank, for each item, that is. Shopping spree on payday eve? That will be $350 to the bank, please.

This, my friends, is how the bank makes money. So, along comes LLOYD CONSTANTINE, a big-shot lawyer, to warn us of horse-hockey I've seen since 1979, that being, "Debit cards enable banks to sidestep the expense of processing checks or cash," or again quoting Mr. Constantine, it represents a huge (20 billion buckaroos) "transfer of wealth from U.S. stores and shoppers to banks."

Why heck, at the cigar shop back home, where the clerk wanted to overthrow the gov'ment, they would not accept plastic for less than a $10 purchase, and that was the cigar shop where the policeman would smoke in front of Mr. Hughes with his gun unsecured and halfway out of the holster, whatever that meant. E-gads, Lovie! The "Reagan-era Fed" never acted on debit card transactions clearing "even Steven" or "at par" but instead duped the consumer into a signature and "interchange fees" for the bank to pocket.

Interchange fees? Is that why I sleep by highway interchanges as the wealthiest man on the planet? Maybe there's more to that "mess," but I did work at banks, that much is undeniable. Regulating those cards? It's up to the Fed, an outfit I plan to sue in federal court the lack of oversight, but I doubt Mr. Constantine will help, even though he thinks the debit card Bonanza is a regulatory job that should fall on the Fed.

I agree, but as with aerospace & defense matters, my place at the table has been stolen by some overweight white guys with hypertension, three kids in college, and a black Lexus in the driveway. Yes, I have two VIN Numbers, but no car, and the policeman just does not care, or as we say in social work, it is not within his "locus of control." So, how dare you question my run for the White House, and given you are so unsupportive, I think I will log-on to the Federal Reserve Bank's website in Saint Louis, Missouri, because as with my personal slogan, "They know things."