Oh yeah, and what happened to my free toaster?

Heads-up: You're staring down the business end of a cranky-old-fogey-type rant. Don't say you weren't warned.

I'm certainly old enough to remember when I could access my own friggin' money via a cash machine without having to think about whether the bank will ding me for exceeding their meagre and arbitrary "limit" of monthly transactions. (Heck, I'm even old enough to remember a time when banks paid 4% interest on garden-variety savings accounts--as opposed to not-quite- zero-point-four percent.)

But, in this day, my paycheck does not even pass through my hands on its way to my account. Similarly, many of the checks I write are not even physically routed through the credit union. The only time I interact with a human teller is when I need traveler's checks or foreign currency or something else out of the ordinary. I realize that ATMs aren't free. But people and branches are far more expensive to keep. So I'd like to know how banks rationalize charging their so-called "valued customers" extra for the privilege of reducing their overhead. Good grief--if I'd kept my first cash machine card around, it'd be old enough to buy its own beer. It's not like there's any novelty factor left, folks.

It's interesting, though, that places like gas stations and grocery stores have become defacto ATMs by asking whether you want cash over an above your purchase. I figure that not only does it save me from being nicked for about ten percent of what I'd normally withdraw (not being one for cash), it also saves me the extra stop at the cash machine.

Which, for the bank means one less interaction with a customer. Which, for the bean-counters, is one less "transaction cost." For the marketing department, however, it's one less chance to imprint the "brand" upon the customer. And for the overall institution, it is one less opportunity to delight with stellar customer service. Which is tragically short-sighted. Because FDIC insured deposits take away any competitive advantage of a reputation for "security." ATMs and internet banking take away much of the face-to-face interaction that was part of a bank's character. The only thing left to compete on is price, and grocery stores are effectively giving their customers a free pass to their own money. It's pretty tough to compete with free, but banking--much like insurance--is not exactly known for being bleeding-edge innovative.

So, as much as folks are banging on about the demise of newspapers and magazines, I have to wonder whether banks--at least the local brick and mortar variety--won't be next in line for adaptation so radical that it will be almost impossible to recognize them.

In all seriousness, I do not want to revert to the days when you couldn't buy a house without putting up roughly half of the money up front. Or where only people who didn't really need them qualified for credit cards. I agree whole-heartedly with Muhammed Yunus that access to credit is a fundamental human right. And I don't want the access to come via the friendly neighborhood loan shark.

But I am also tired of people sitting on the money I earn, high-handedly dictating the terms under which I can access it, while the whole time using it to make money for themselves. Something broke in the last thirty years or so. We can debate for days whether the free market itself or lopsided deregulation or what-have-you or some combination thereof is to blame. In the end it won't matter. Evolution in finance doesn't care. Money will always follow value--something that banks or credit unions don't seem to be doing much business in anymore.