The First Bank of Fat Tony or Grifters Savings and Loan

Times are tough for most of the world. Folks are losing jobs. Paychecks don't seem to come along often enough. Options are running short.

In fact, many people are resorting to making ends meet with payday loans on the high end and the black market on the low end. Whatever staves off foreclosure, people are willing to deal with any level of lending, regulated or not.

That is, unless you bank with Fifth Third. Yes, the little bank with the funny name has made the leap into a new service sure to be a boon courtesy to its customers. It's simple really, and not a new idea at all: it's loan-sharking.

Have a gander.
According to the disclosure, Fifth Third will give you a loan for 35 days for a mere cut of 10%. Congratulations, not only are you scraping to pay your bills, you now earn only 90% of what you should get paid.

Fifth Third will no doubt hype the benevolent hand they're reaching out to the downtrodden, and draw a comparison to how much fee income they're not collecting when they offer such a service. Yet, what really catches my ire is the fact that the same people who they're willing to let mortgage their paycheck would be drummed out of any manager's office were they to seek a reasonable, everyday car loan or mortgage refinance.

Banks are all about fee income these days. They'll slash the grace period on your credit card, strengthen the default limits of the same, charge you a few bucks more for a foreign ATM, etc. Then they'll sell an out-and-out swindle like this Early Access and feed us a line about helping a guy when he's down.

It's about another line all together. That bottom line ain't so rosy when you're trading at $7.52 a share. Time to rebuild on the backs of poor people.

Of course, there's no possible way this could go wrong. They're limiting advances to $500. They're charging a lower fee than most payday loan outlets that can charge rates equivalent to 400% APR (and cheaper than the cash advance fee on their own credit cards). They're providing a service that most folks would jump at when the well is dry.

Who cares?

This is merely a ploy for the bank to take a cut of deposits and lend money to the otherwise undesirable. Not to mention their setting themselves up to generate further fee income. It's unsecured credit preying on the desperate, a band-aid on a gushing wound. It's loan-sharking through the frickin' ATM!

Congratulations, Fifth Third. You're a damn bookie, a hustler, a cheat, a con. And you're making money off of it.

Cheaters!

In a fitting twist, thoughts travel back to a Purdue vs. Penn St. football game in West Lafayette during my time at school. A Purdue player was streaking down the sideline, almost assuredly going in for the touchdown when a player off of the Nittany Lion bench (possibly a late coming 11th defensive player, possibly a Woody Hayes "There'll be none of that round here" guy) and tackled said Boilermaker.

The crowd went ape shit, and somehow one voice rang high above all others screaming with a pristeen decipherability, "CHEATERS!"

Out comes the report that the Big Ten has a lead football official on the books that has not only filed for bankruptcy in the past, but did it all while owing cash to multiple casinos. The bankruptcy is a troubling issue because most officials - at least in theory - are at least somewhat chosen for their ability to not succumb to financial pressures. Ever notice that a lot of NFL referees are lawyers?

With the NCAA being as vast as it is, there's no chance they can find enough six-figure guys willing to pull on the stripes. In steps Stephen Pamon, the offical in question, and the same guy who headed up the crew for this year's Purdue vs. Penn St. game in Happy Valley. The Boilers were driving late in the game when Purdue receiver Selwyn Lymon took a play out of bounds only to have the nearest official rule that the game clock should continue running - causing Purdue to use a timeout - rather than stopping the clock as most plays the go out of bounds tend to do.

Here's why I hate this situation: it actually gives me reason to look beyond reason.

Purdue fans tend to be more self-critical than their in-state counterparts. While there are the requisite odd balls determined that some Freemason led conspiracry is holding the Boilermakers down, most of us can see failure and call it what it is (take tonight's shit the bed performance losing at home to Wofford for example).

These revelations - details that still don't definitively point to a fixed game - actually give Purdue fans a reason to think some Vegas, mob-laced, point shaving conspiracy is in the works each time we lose. We're more than used to living with losing, but we'd rather do it on our terms by overestimating ourselves, being outmatched, or fumbling the game away.

Now, I'm not stuck wondering whether every questionable call is somehow tied to some back judge laying 13 points and his next mortgage payment. I'm just going to be stuck next to a guy at some future game who's certain that's the case.

Like we needed any more pain these days. We're in the Motor City Bowl for Purdue Pete's sake.