Banks’ Conduct Goes Unpunished

The banks are picking your pocket. Exorbitant fees are extracted from any service provided while a pittance is paid for funds on deposit.

The recent disclosure that banks have also made a lucrative racket of hustling extremely sensitive information about their depositor relationships, information every depositor rightfully expected the banks to maintain in the strictest of confidence, is sickening.

Now comes the disturbing news that there are no penalties to banks for not notifying customers before their accounts are turned over to the state as property unclaimed [“Bank Errors Cost Clients Millions in Lost Property,” Aug. 15]. This clever “oversight” further jeopardizes depositor accounts and safe deposits to insiders whose proclivity it is to steal outright.

Lost property? Missing accounts? Customers unknown? The law expressly prohibits anonymous banking transactions of any kind. So how can this be?

The increasingly capricious and callous conduct on the part of banking institutions is appalling and exposes the fiction that the steady shaping up of the industry into a few behemoths ultimately militates to the depositors’ good.

HARRIETT CARR

Los Angeles