There was actually a time in this country, before "deregulation" when banks made money from taking in deposits, lending that money out and charging interest. They would pay you compound interest for the money that you deposited with them. Sometimes, they'd give you a toaster or a blender on top of the compound interest

That was it: deposits and loans. And they were able to get rich beyond imagining from that simple, honest business model. They built huge, ornate buildings with cupolas and pillars and marble floors that squeaked when you walked on them. There made so much money that they built gilded temples with a tiny fraction of the profits. Generation after generation, they just got rich, bless their hearts.

But then came "deregulation" when banks decided that the unimaginable wealth they could accumulate from the "deposits and loans" model was just not sexy enough. They needed more. Their shareholders demanded more. They not only needed to make even greater wealth, but the rate at which they made tons of money had to increase every single quarter.

Flash forward a few decades, and banks don't really care for deposits and loans any more, because there are these exotic, sexy bits of fiction called "derivatives". They are the banking equivalent of scratch-off Lotto tickets. They fucked it up so badly that the entire economy went into a tailspin, from which we are only now beginning to recover. They fucked things up so badly that they can't even make money from the old-fashioned "deposit and loan" model that worked so well for so long, so now they invented a new profit center, known as "fees". But since their customers have things like computers and calculators and other modern tools for adding up columns of numbers, they have to make these fees hidden and confusing, like ninjas, so that unless you are very, very careful (and maybe even then) you will end up paying a fee. For example, for years my business account has been "free" as long as I keep a certain balance. Then, one day, in a codicil buried three pages deep in a special agreement rider that they mentioned on the back side of page 3 of my monthly statement, they said that unless I used the debit card for that business account at least 5 times within every month, I would be charged $100 for the privilege of letting them hold my money. Further, the "month" is counted not the way we count months, from say April 1 to May 1, but from some shifting day which is tied to the statement period. And by the way, that "month" ends at the open of business tomorrow, so sorry, but you've been charged $100. Don't worry, though, because we deducted it from your account without mentioning it to you before. If it wasn't for a lady that I went to high school with who works at the bank who clued me, I'd never have known about this little trick and would have been hit with that $100 at least once, if not for several months because I didn't expect this kind of sleazy behavior from a business with such a spiffy and noble-looking building with marble floors, so I don't pour over my monthly statements like the Torah, because the only people who can use the account are me and my wife and I know how much money is supposed to be there, give or take, so if it's in the ballpark, I assume that money isn't being funneled out with such arcane practices.

When President Obama and the liberal Democrats in congress proposed requiring the banks to actually disclose this innovative profit center known as "fees", there immediately went up a hue and cry that these regulations were Marxist and Communist and Fascist and Czarist and probably Muslim in some secret way, because we all know that banks cannot make money unless they are set free from any regulation, like say, one that would require them to get rich by "taking deposits and lending money".

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