Jim Hightower

Our world has turned topsy turvy. Instead of people robbing banks, banks are robbing people.

Even more bizarre is the fact that the favorite target of banker thieves is their own customer base. Most of the robberies – which add up to tens of billions of dollars a year that bankers snatch from us – are pulled off with concealed weapons that have hair triggers and fire multiple rounds. The weapons are called "fees."

Thanks to a quick-draw maneuver that most big banks have recently adopted, they are now coming at us with new fees that are attached to our debit cards. Because of today's bad economy, consumers have rapidly been shifting from credit cards to debit cards as a way to control their spending. After all, the prime virtue of debit transactions is that the charges are pulled right out of your bank account, and if your account doesn't have enough money to pay for a charge, the bank's computers instantly reject the debit transaction.

Ever so quietly, though, those cunning bankers have created "overdraft protection" programs that let debit-card customers charge more money to the card than they have in their accounts. You might not know you're in such a program, for the law lets banks enroll you automatically.

Thus, you might buy a $50 thingamajig with your card, when you have only $40 in your account. The transaction goes through, but, unbeknownst to you – Pow! – your bank automatically hits you with a $35 overdraft fee. If you make, say, three other debit purchases of any size that same day – Pow! Pow! Pow! – you're hit with three more $35 fees. And if you don't replenish you bank account within a couple of days to make good on those overdrafts – Pow! – you're hit with a $35 late fee, even though you're unaware that you're overdrawn.

If you did to them what they're doing to us, you'd be doing hardtime for armed robbery. Shouldn't these bankers at least have to wear masks to work?