Money Matters

I did something very silly last month. You see, I pay my bills online. But on Friday, I started to get phone calls from my credit card telling me that I didn't my bill last month. So, I went online and looked at my bank statement and saw that my virtual check did clear. I called the hotline number and the lady on the other end told me, yes, the virtual check did clear, but it was short...by $5 from the minimum payment. Because my APR went up and I didn't bother to look at the new bill, I just paid what I always paid, but I wasn't supposed to. So guess what? My APR went up again. So now next month, I get to pay $100 more to cover the new new APR which is about 24%. Would someone like to tell me how the hell the banks keep getting bailed out by the single girls of America?

I recently read an article about kleptocracy. I'm pretty much a moderate with noble ideas about the way the world is supposed to work. But these days, I'm becoming more and more discouraged. Even though I got a raise this year (which many people didn't and won't), even though I have good health insurance that my employer pays for, and even though I'm making my ends meet every month (though my liquid funds are drying rapidly), I want to know if things will ever get easier. When the "rich" and -- more aptly -- greedy are going to be reigned in. I don't believe that the central government should be telling me who I can marry and what to do with my body, but I do think they should tell corporations to keep their hands to themselves and out of my pockets. I'm getting pretty tired of it. And other than voting out every incumbent there is with the hopes that the new representatives will actually try to do something that doesn't give them personal gain, there's really nothing I can do about it. When did America start cannibalising it's citizens?