Bank job

I have been critical of a couple of Felix Salmon's recent posts but he makes a good point in this post about how banks mistreat their customers by pushing inappropriate products on them.

When I moved to New York I chose a bank which was convenient to my new work location. Over the years I have been satisfied with the basic banking services it has provided. However it has also attempted to sell me a lot of dubious financial products like overdraft protection, credit protection, high fee mutual funds etc. It is unfortunate that banks find it more profitable to peddle this stuff than to provide reasonable financial advice.

Of course this is a general problem in the finance industry. Financial institutions expend too much time and effort on thinking up new ways to trick their customers into overpaying and not enough on how to provide good value.