Bailed Out Banks Gouging Jobless with Fees to Access their Money

This story is in no way surprising. If you find it surprising, then you have very little familiarity with the U.S. banking and financial industry. Anyway, it turns out that getting laid off from your job as a result of a crippled economy, which was largely created by the banking industry's ineptitude, isn't enough. Now, after going through the indignity of filing for unemployment benefits and getting awarded said benefits, the same banks that helped put you in that position are now going to hammer away with exorbitant fees to access your funds.

Many banks, in conjunction with the states issuing the unemployment benefits, offer people debit cards that they use to get access to their money. Of course, every time they try to access cash at an ATM or other location, they are charged a fee to do so.

And, even more conveniently, the banks often choose to allow for over-drafts to occur in the accounts, which immediately activates at least a $20 fee for overdrawing the account. This is an option that the banks could just as easily turn off, simply not allowing any expenditures beyond the amount of money in the account. But why pass on the easy fees that they know cash-strapped folks are all the more likely to incur?

Now there are calls from politicians to stop the fees, at least from banks who received federal bailout money. But that is just the economic merry go round that the country is currently riding. The banking industry runs the economy into the ground, under the watch and encouragement of government. The resulting financial crisis creates massive job losses. The government spends trillions to stabilize the banking industry. The government spends billions to provide unemployment benefits to the unemployed. The banking industry still squeezes the unemployed for additional fees. Who's left holding the bag at the end of the day? The American taxpayers.