No, I want to hear the warped logic.
Then again, it may just be: no income for the banks, they go bust, who will provide banking services to poor people? kind of retarded mental gymnastics.
Crux of the argument?
Profit margins are very small on small personal bank accounts. If NSF fees are reduced, how ever will we profit from these tiny accounts?!
One bank made only 49 billion profit last year, up from 48 billion in 2022. Why won't somebody think of the banks!?
plaintext
These people are far and away the heaviest users of bank overdrafts. The Financial Health Network, a personal finance nonprofit, says the group most likely to overdraft includes “financially vulnerable” households that struggle to pay their bills every month and typically make less than $30,000 a year. Almost half of financially vulnerable households with checking accounts overdrafted in 2022, and of that group, two-thirds overdrafted at least three times, one-third did so six or more times, and one-fifth overdrafted 10 times or more. With an average overdraft fee of $26.61, hundreds of dollars in fees can land on the most cash-strapped customers. Capping those fees — possibly as low as $3 — would be a huge boon to families who really need the help. Who could oppose that?
Well, as with any nice-sounding policy, it’s important to consider the alternatives, both for the customer and for the banker.
For depositors, overdraft fees can be an expensive alternative to even worse options, such as payday loans or having their electricity shut off (and paying a reconnection fee to turn it back on). And “the best of bad alternatives” can also be sort of true for bankers, who must find some way to defray the cost of providing what is basically an unsecured loan to people who are, as we’ve seen, often financially struggling and might be unable to repay the money. The fees also help pay for “free” checking (which costs banks quite a bit of money to provide).
If we cap overdraft fees, how will banks make up the lost revenue?
From profits, you say, and fair enough, but Patrick McKenzie, who writes the Bits About Money newsletter, points out that the reason your bank is so obsessed with getting you to sign up for paperless statements is that the profit margins on checking accounts are so thin, they can be meaningfully improved by saving the cost of 12 stamps a year. “Margins on small bank accounts are very thin,” he wrote recently, and “credit losses can easily be larger than several years of them.”
Now the government wants to make those accounts even less profitable. It seems possible banks would look to limit their losses by getting rid of those customers or making up the revenue somewhere else — or possibly both. This seems to have happened in the past, judging from what we saw when federal regulators preempted some state fee caps in 2001. According to researchers from the New York Fed, the exempted banks both raised overdraft fees and expanded available overdraft credit, while lowering minimum balance requirements. The rate at which checks were returned for insufficient funds declined by 15 percent. And the share of low-income households with a bank account rose by 10 percent, suggesting that minimum balance requirements had kept those households from opening accounts.
That doesn’t mean that no one would benefit from this rule. High overdraft fees can also deter people from opening a bank account, and it’s possible that effect would outweigh any contraction of credit. The financial industry has also changed a lot since 2001, with nonbank alternatives, such as Cash App, that might offer the marginal bank customer a better replacement than an old-fashioned check-cashing store. But there would still likely be winners and losers, and I don’t know whether the former’s gains would outweigh the latter’s losses. I’m not sure the administration does, either.
If we cap overdraft fees, how will banks make up the lost revenue?
Won't somebody think of the bankers! They hardly make any money at all on your broke ass $16.42 balance account!
it's only a problem if you see the banks as only a profit source and not as a service.
We had to force corps / government to give us days off, Healthcare, voting, not being slaves, electricity, water, internet... all things they wanted to be products and not services
Yeah, you don't make a huge amount of money on a service that everyone needs - boo fucking hoo, close the business and get a real job and stop eating avocado toast.
I think I killed some brain cells reading this article, but I'm glad you posted it, thank you!
Paywalled. Open in incognito.
Their point is that poor people use overdrafting instead of making actual loans. Removing the overdraft revenue from banks would make banks not offer it, making it necessary for poor people to take worse loans.
It's just an opinion piece and the author admits that it could have other results.
The general concern is if you remove the overdraft fee as a tool, banks will just require a minimum or cancel you.
If financially struggling families can't even access basic banking, they are further disenfranchised and removed from a stability, and eventually wealth generation
Sounds like a great time to actually bring back postal banking if the "job creators" can't handle just making "some money" instead of " lots of money" from these accounts.
I'm sure the post office would be glad to have the "some money."
Under very, very limited circumstances, maybe. Like you need gas to get to work now, get paid tomorrow, and have nothing in your account? Yeah, maybe, but that's an expensive tank of gas for someone that's that short on cash.
OTOH, I can't count the number of times where my former bank processed my paycheck last--even though it went in first--and then hit me with overdraft fees for buying groceries, gas, paying bills, etc. (This was National City Bank; they ended up losing a class action lawsuit about it, but they still made more money from their theft than they had to pay back out.)
IMO, there should be zero overdraft fees; if the money isn't in your account, the charge is declined. All of this shit should be done in real-time, instead of waiting for a merchant to post at the end of the day. This is the twenty-fucking-second century, and it's not that goddamn hard.
Upsetting to hear banks don't get any better a century from now. Good luck to you future man.
What's funny is that it looked odd when I read it, but I just quickly brushed it off as a "well you don't see it written often."
You can disable overdraft "protection" at many banks. I disabled it on my account when Commerce Bank got eaten by TD, and they transferred years of withdrawls then deposits to "balance" my account between systems and I was handed a potential few-thousand-dollar overdraft pile. Told them to kiss the fattest part of my ass and disable overdraft immediately.
Or even better, make banks immediately start treating any negative balance as a credit. There can be a low limit, but enforce a low interest rate. For all that banks have done to us, I feel like this is literally the least they can do—and shit, they’d still turn more profit.
Megan McArdle is the dumbest bitch in the world. I refuse to click on anything she writes because her shitty takes don't deserve views. She's actually a big part of why I unsubscribed from WaPo (that and the whole neolib vibe) because I want zero of my dollars benefiting her.
I have no desire to read but I bet her argument comes down to "if they don't have overdraft fees then they will go into deeper debt by overdrafting more and that is worse somehow"
Checked what else she has written, the next article along was seriously "How far should we be willing to go to silence Nazis?"
She's worried that if Nazi's can't have their free speech then they'll come for the white supremacists who don't identify as Nazis next...and that apparently sets a very dangerous precedent!!
First they came for the Nazis, and I didn't speak up, for I wasn't a Nazi.
Then they came for the white nationalists, and I didn't speak up for I wasn't a white nationalist.
Then they came for the fascist insurrectionists, and I didn't speak up for I wasn't a fascist insurrectionist.
Then noone came for me because I wasn't a fucking monster, and by that time, there was no monsters left to whine about culture war bullshit.
Then the country was pretty damn great, actually, and we enjoyed our new found freedom and age of equality and prosperity.
This is a weird topic, because on the one hand, they have every right to speak and assemble, no matter how much we like it. Even the ACLU took on a case defending the American Nazi Party and their right to assemble and march. It truly is a right which the government cannot have any say in who it applies to. I won't go into any bullshit argument that they'll go after other people next, but it's a right that needs to apply to everyone.
However, that only applies to the government. Everyone else can and should tell them to go fuck themselves and corporations can ban their asses from every service online. They don't have any right to having their voices amplified online or any other service.
The "slippery slope" logical fallacy. A classic tool in the braindead conservative debate kit.
Has anyone stopped to consider that maybe she's just a ragebait shill? and everyone angry about her and talking about her are doing exactly as she intended. Occupying your brain space and wasting your time, distracting you from a million more important things you could be doing.
Megan is a national treasure.
You can always count on her to selflessly use her to name to publish the most absurdly dog shit arguments to defend corporations and the powerful.
She's also pretty dumb.
She’s also pretty dumb.
is she or does she just know where her paycheck is coming from?
That's a question you'd only ask if you haven't read any of her writing...
Might I suggest starting with her pieces on The Handmaid's Tale, the Grenfell Tower Fire, and anything to do with kitchenware.
If banks are funded by the government (ongoing bailouts and ridiculously beneficial laws for them) then they should be considered a public service and available to everyone, at least at a basic level
Something something most of Europe does not allow you to overdraft your account and people get by just fine something
But clearly you guys have less freedom than Americans, because that's what American TV told me.
A lot of US banks also have that as an option, people opt in to "overdraft protection" anyway. The banks make it sound like a safer option, instead of the predatory practice it normally is.
I've had them turn it off, and then one day they just... Did it again. Bastards don't even respect that because they think they know better.
If we cap overdraft fees, how will banks make up the lost revenue?
Get in the fucking sea.
Yeah stop talking about corpos like they're forces of nature or phenomena . "Oh if the bank no money then no loans or whatever" nah that's a choice. Made by people. People with cars that can be keyed. Allegedly.
There's always some sheltered, rich, idiot, on the Internet who will argue against literally anything.
Obv the banks can fuck off, but I do seriously worry that we'll see a response from banks regarding this, and it will probably be an increase in banks requiring your account to hold a minimum balance. They're both pretty bad, so I'm not sure which is worse, but larger minimum balance requirements could push some people out of reach of a local bank account.
I mean, the real issue is wealth inequality...
Instead of trying to fix all the different symptoms, we should fix the underlying problem causing them all
But I doubt that's what the article is saying.
well, duh. Your Bank will just stop allowing you to overdraft, declining your Transactions.
I have never ever had a transaction that overdrafted where I was happy they didn’t just decline it. Zero desire to pay $38 for the “convenience” when I could have just used a different card.
I’ve asked my bank to not allow it on my account at all and they told me NO, they can’t do that, because it’s “a service we provide our customers for their convenience”. Right. I don’t want that convenience, dicks.
McArdle has described herself as a "right-leaning libertarian."[23] David Brooks categorized her as part of a group of bloggers who "start from broadly libertarian premises but do not apply them in a doctrinaire way.
McArdle began blogging in November 2001 with a blog called "Live From The WTC," which arose from her employment with a construction firm involved in cleanup at the World Trade Center site following the September 11 attacks. She wrote under the pen name "Jane Galt," playing on the name "John Galt," a central character in Ayn Rand's Objectivist novel Atlas Shrugged. In November 2002 she renamed the site "Asymmetrical Information," a reference to the economics term of the same name. That blog had two other occasional contributors, Zimran Ahmed (writing under the pen name "Winterspeak"), and the pseudonymous "Mindles H. Dreck."
McCardle was an outspoken supporter of the Iraq War both before and after the invasion by the United States. She later made a partial admission of error for this position [10]
Another post by McArdle, from April 2005, discusses why she takes no position on the issue of same-sex marriage. She wrote: "All I'm asking for is for people to think more deeply than a quick consultation of their imaginations to make that decision... This humility is what I want from liberals when approaching market changes; now I'm asking it from my side [libertarians], in approaching social ones."[11]
In 2009, she criticized an article in Playboy by eXile Online editors Mark Ames and Yasha Levine which detailed the influence of the Koch brothers in American and Tea Party politics. Playboy took down the article as a result of the negative response.[13]
McArdle has been critical of the libertarian politician Ron Paul, taking him to task for not strongly disavowing racist statements that appeared in his newsletters,[25] arguing against his championing of tax credits, and accusing him of lacking specificity about cutting government spending.[26] McArdle was also quoted as saying that Ron Paul "doesn't understand anything about monetary policy," and that "he wastes all of his time on the House Financial Services Committee ranting crazily."[27]
Lol
Since 2009, McArdle has argued extensively against instituting a system of national health insurance in the United States, and specifically against the federal health care reform bill the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which was signed into law in March 2010. In addition to a number of blog posts on the subject, she also wrote an article, "Myth Diagnosis," in the March 2010 Atlantic.[31]
In a July 2009 blog post, McArdle listed two reasons that she objected to such a system: first, that it would stifle innovation, because "Monopolies are not innovative, whether they are public or private," and second, that "Once the government gets into the business of providing our health care, the government gets into the business of deciding whose life matters, and how much."[32] Commentator Ezra Klein of The Washington Post criticized this post, writing, "In 1,600 words, she doesn't muster a single link to a study or argument, nor a single number that she didn't make up (what numbers do exist come in the form of thought experiments and assumptions). Megan's argument against national health insurance boils down to a visceral hatred of the government."[33]
In an August 2009 post, McArdle reiterated, "My objection is primarily, as I've said numerous times, that the government will destroy innovation. It will do this by deciding what constitutes an acceptable standard of care, and refusing to fund treatment above that. It will also start controlling prices."[34]
In a comment to that post, McArdle stated, "The United States currently provides something like 80–90% of the profits on new drugs and medical devices. Perhaps you think you can slash profits 80% with no effect on the behavior of the companies that make these products. I don't." In a subsequent Washington Post online chat, a commenter asked her, "You said that medical innovation will be wiped out if we have a type of national health care, because European drug companies get 80% of their revenue from Americans. Where did you get this statistic?" McArdle responded that it was "a hypothetical, not a statistic." This was criticized in a blog post in The New Republic.[35] In response to this criticism, McArdle stated that she had misunderstood the question, and "thought the commenter was referring to the postulated hypothetical destruction of all US profits." She also stated that, though "there are no hard numbers available," she estimated that the U.S. contribution to pharmaceutical profits was at least 60%.[36]
McArdle married Peter Suderman, an associate editor for the libertarian magazine Reason, in 2010.[37]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_McArdle
This woman is a Libertarian ass and her views come from the highest levels of privilege.
Couldn’t you just… opt out of overdrafting?
I'm hoping you forgot the /s, but just in case you're not from the US: no, it's built into almost every financial institution's terms and conditions, at least in my experience. I had to get my mother a pre-paid credit card because she would overdraft regularly, and the bank had no solution. The pre-paid just declines payment, like the good old days.
Honestly we need responses like this more often into society at this point.
People tweeting stuff. We allow tweets from anyone.
RULES:
