Sunday, February 20, 2011

Money (That's What I Want)





Banks. from their very inception, they were conceived as a means to steal from people. ''Hey, let me watch over your money!'' quickly became ''pay me to watch over your money'', and the interest they charged was way more than the interest they received - and i was all normal, because it's the basis of our capitalist system.

Then capitalism ran amok, and we gave banks the rights to also charge us fees for handling our accounts, because more-than-doubling us on interest on our own money wasn't enough, so now we were happily also giving them $5-20 a month for them to store our cash and give us 0.1% interest, while they lent others our money at a 5-10% rate. ''Financial institutions'' which weren't actually banks, on the other hand, started charging well over 30%.

But that wasn't enough. We also had to let the bastards gamble our money away, which made way for the financial crisis we're currently in.

And it seems that also wasn't enough. On Friday, my bank froze my bank account, not giving me any reason for it. Of course, during the day, it was fine, but as soon as my bank closed, the funds weren't available. And, of course, as banks have a way of fucking things up, it was nearly impossible to get an answer from anyone concerning anything after hours.

Three phone calls got me to a lady who could ''see the account is locked, but there's no other information as to why of what transactions are prevented''. Can I still pay my bills, write checks - pay my creditors, at least? Or will they have to starve just like me? No answer, just a vague ''there is someplace you can call on Saturday where they might have more answers for you.

Come Saturday, and it turns out this number is for an open bank branch - same bank, different branch, so they can't unfreeze the account, but at least their supervisor can tell me it's a ''governmental lockdown''. So, it's narrowed down to three things: provincial taxes, federal taxes, or that dude from Florida who thinks I scammed him started procedures and the cops froze it.

I should know on Monday. I still had to live off of other people's money for the weekend, which really sucks. And without knowing the actual reason why, either - which sucks even more. And the money I borrowed, I used on groceries for myself and the cats - which means I'm late on mailing Ebay DVDs I sold (Galaxy Quest, The Big Lebowski and Lost: Season Two - Season 1 still available if interested).

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