NASA GISS keeps a table of monthly average global temperatures at this address:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts.txt

The way to read a particular monthly number is to interpret the value as hundredths of a degree above or below the absolute global mean for 1951-1980. The unit of measure is degrees celcius.

So when we look at the table and see that the anomaly for September 2009 was 86, that is 86/100 of a degree. What it means is that this past September was nearly a degree warmer, world-wide, than the 1951-1980 average temperature for September.

What I find useful about this table is that I can look at long term trends. Each row has a column with the heading J-D. This column represents the average annual anomaly for all months of that year. You have to go back to 1976 to see a negative number. Every year since then has been above the mean. That’s a trend.

The 2009 anomaly is currently 70. With September being even warmer than that, there is at least the possibility that the average will go higher than 70. If it stays at 70, 2009 will be tied with 1998 as the second warmest year on record. When the average anomaly of 70 happened in 1998, it was an immense leap from the previous record of 48 in 1987.

Since then it has been eclipsed by the 2005 anomaly of 76, and approached by every other year since 2002. In other words, that shocking new record anomaly has quietly become the norm.

We are now headed into an El Nino, but we are also in a prolonged solar minimum. Thus, another 1998-like leap is unlikely any time soon, but certainly it will happen when the elements of these events line up again as they did in 1998.

And there is no denying that this solar minimum is significantly warmer than the Daulton Minimum and the Maunder Minimum. 2008 was a cool year, with an anomaly of “only” 54, low by recent standards.

It was the 9th warmest year on record.

You will need to read the previous post to make sense of this post.

At the end of the day on October 7, 2009, my checking account balance was $414.70. A depsosit had been made which was waiting to be credited to the next banking day. This would also be the case on October 9 and 13, which was a Monday, the deposit having been made on Saturday.

M&T’s web site dutifully recorded the deposits and reflected the amount in the balance. At no time between October 7 and October 13 did the balance fall below zero.

There were seven debits to my account in that period. M&T found a way to hit me with NSF fees ($37 each) for six of them.

I wrote a letter to the branch manager, showing him his own web site with balances that supported each and every debit. I asked for a response in writing. My wife delivered the letter, which he read, after which he told my wife to have me meet with him and that there was “no way” I would be getting all of the fees refunded. I told my wife that I will not meet with him, that I want his response in writing and I will proceed from there.

I have already contacted Pennsylvania State Attorney General Tom Corbett’s office, to see if he will investigate these practices.

It seems clear that M&T is posting debits before credits. Why? To favor themselves and screw their own customers. A balance that should be $96 is instead $88- because of these NSF fees. Other transactions which should have cleared were NSFed due to the fees which preceded them.

Never a below-zero balance. Six out of seven transactions NSFed.

Much more to come on this. If this must be the battle ground to make banks stop screwing their own customers, so be it.

If any manager of any bank wishes to step forward and reject these practices, I will be happy to bank with you. All you really have to do is one thing, just one:

If I make a deposit before you process a debit, please process the deposit first.

Is that asking too much?

I will name more names as this saga unfolds. I have a suspicion that it will get very ugly.

I have a fundamental question to which I currently don’t have an answer.

I consider it an existential question in the electronic age:

“What is the human reaction when institutions steal?”

If you steal from me I can go to the police and say “Morris stole from me.” And they will make a case and you will get in trouble, if you did it.

Where do I go when my bank steals from me, and simply deny that they stole? Simply insist this is how they do business?

Who do I go to? Who gets in trouble?

Today, those answers are both: “Nobody.”

And that has to change.

The details (I will keep my bank’s name private for now, pending the final resolution of this matter):

My income is not enough to pay all of the bills. I need my wife’s income, too. Due to personal circumstances, her income has become less reliable recently, causing our bank balance to hover close to zero for a day here and a day there, until more money comes in. We have several bills which come out automatically, so it’s always dangerous to use the accounft for any other purpose. We try not to.

On October 7 our balance was $410. We knew a rent check for $430 was due to hit the account, and we made a deposit that day. It was made after close of business, but still in the afternoon. We fully expected it to hit the account as of October 8. It did.

However, not until the bank decided to post the rent check, which put our account in the red. They then processed a $10 credit card purchase, also while the account was in the red, and docked us $37 twice - $74. Then they posted our deposit, which would have covered both debits.

So now my wife has to waste part of her afternoon making sense to the people at the bank, that we did everything properly and there is no justification for delaying the posting of the deposit until after they posted the debits, other than to screw us. The money was in their hands, the information was available to them at the start of the nightly cycle, and they simply chose to do things in the sequence which would allow them to steal from their own customers.

I know that there has been talk of making banks allow customers to decline transactions which would overdraw them. However, such a bill does not go nearly far enough. At least two, possibly three things also need to happen:

1. Deposits made before the start of  the nightly cycle must be posted before any debits are posted.

2. If the customer uses their debit card as a credit card, the bank has two choices: a) they can place a visible hold for that amount against the balance, so the customer can see that the money is unavailable; b) they can post the transaction at a later date, but the debit to the account must be as of the posted date. We must outlaw the practice of back-posting a “credit” transaction to a debit account.

3. The bankers say that their customers prefer to have the largest debits paid before the smallest. Fine: give customers a choice. If I want to pay my nickel and dime stuff first, let me. Because quite frankly I’d rather not pay $37 for a 5$ purchase, when I had the funds to cover the purchase until you paid the largest debit first.

I’d also like to see the fees rgulated. $37 is obscene, especially when no human labor was involved. There should be a graduating scale so that the occasional mistake doesn’t cost anywhere near as much. Rules and options also need to be clearly spelled out.

We need national banking reform, because quite simply the banks have turned on their own customers. We put our money into their supposedly safe hands, and they repay our trust by finding every way they can to steal that money.

The very definition of pathetic.