The Debit Card Hustle | Mother Jones

The Debit Card Hustle | Mother Jones: "But the new Fed regulations do nothing about that. Under industry pressure, they ruled in 2004 that overdraft fees weren't loans, and they still aren't. So a $35 fee on a $17 overdraft that's paid off in five days —and yes, this is the industry average — amounts to an APR of over 10,000%. Except it's not an APR because it's not a loan. It's a 'fee.'

Hogwash. It's a small, short-term loan, just like a credit card charge. The APR should be somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-30%, like a credit card, with perhaps a small processing fee added to that. And since we live in an electronic era, that processing fee is small: maybe 50 cents or so. A dollar max.

But the Fed did nothing about that. Or about the number of fees banks can charge per day. Or about re-ordering of fees to run up total charges."