Bank of America and Slavery Through Debt

 by Roland Hulme

Bank of America has announced a $5 fee for customers using their debit cards. Is this the last straw?

Debt holders are suckling pigs

When I was seven years old, my father took me to National Westminster Bank to open my first account. I received a free piggy bank (with the promise of more if my savings grew) and earned the princely sum of 4% interest on my balance.

Flash forward two and a half decades and the situation is starkly different.

My Bank of America accounts now give me no interest on my balance. My "savings" account gives me less than 0.2% return on my savings. In addition, I have to pay for the "privilege" of having these two accounts..

You have to wonder what went wrong. How did the entire concept of banking change so dramatically in just a few short years? How did banks go from eagerly scrabbling to earn our business to suddenly  demanding we pay them to spend our money?

My understanding of banking was always that they were indebted to the account holder, not the other way around. Banks made their money by investing the deposits they received; giving out loans, collecting interest and basically making a profit on their customer's money (a proportion of which they returned, modestly, through interest.)

When did that change? How come banks are now making their profits by charging customers for being customers?  It seems there are fees for everything; from using a teller to charging stuff on your card. Banks no longer seem to be in the business of making their customer's money grow, but of filtering as much of it as they can from their customer's pocket into their own.

They've become parasites, plain and simple.

The latest travesty is Bank of America deciding to charge a $5 monthly fee for customers who use their debit cards. That's on top of up to $12 monthly fees for simply having an account, and other costs (like I get charged $5 if I use a teller instead of a cash machine.)

You know what? I've had enough. America has, too.

As a nation, we need to take our collective trillions of dollars out of these parasitical corporations and trust them instead to Credit Unions and smaller banks - the ones that appreciate customers and treat them, and their money, with respect.

But we won't.

Because the reason Bank of America, and other banks like them, have continued on this path of sucking customers dry is because they own them.

If customers were in the enviable situation of being able to take their money and move it elsewhere, they would. But today, most Americans owe more to the banks than they have in their savings accounts, in the way of mortgages, car loans, private loans and other debts.

And you can take your money and run, but banks don't let you walk away from your debts.

So as a result, millions of Americans are forced to put up with banks sucking more and more of their hard-earned money out of them; and there's nothing they can do about it. They're captives; like juicy little flies caught in a spider-web.

This is why America promotes its consumer culture so much. This is why we're bombarded with messages to Buy! Buy! Buy! all day. Because the moment we take money from the banks, they own us; and turn us into obedient diary cattle who they can milk for money long into our old age.

Well, not me.

I don't owe Bank of America a cent - so if they pursue this additional charging matrix, I'm walking. To a different bank, or a local credit union, or anywhere that is willing to pay for the privilege of borrowing my money.

The moral of the story, my friends, is that debt is slavery. We might believe that Abraham Lincoln emancipated the country; but he merely ushered in a different form of slavery; one that ignores race, or gender, or religion. It's the indenture of debt and it's what keeps this nation in bondage.

We talk so much about liberty; but there is only one true American liberty left: freedom from debt.

It's one too many of us will never see.

Forget this talk of "tyranny" from government. The government is a pawn, much like we are. It's banks and the banking system that own this country - and if we indenture ourselves to them through debt, they own us.

Instead, live free.

Live debt free.