( And if you think banks are sleazy, wait till you see the dating website in Cracked's new Rom.Com series . )

Some institutions get more hate than they deserve. Most lawyers and police officers are just doing their jobs, and most businesses really are simply trying to make a profit. But banks ... well, banks make it really hard to defend them. They are the middleman in every transaction (you simply can't function in modern society keeping your cash in a coffee can buried in your yard), and goddamn do they exploit their position in the shadiest ways imaginable. Let's take a moment to examine some of the perfectly legal ways these guys screw us on a daily basis:

5 They Can Arbitrarily Manipulate Your Payments to Create Overdraft Fees

Fuse/Fuse/Getty Images

We understand that banks aren't kindly rich uncles who can dole out money when they feel sorry for us. They have to charge some kind of fine when we try to take out more money than is actually in our accounts, otherwise it'd be a free money festival forever (or until the whole system came crashing down hours later). But where banks take it to the next level is when they carefully arrange things so that, with one mistake, they can keep stomping you with what amounts to a 1,000 percent interest rate. They can charge anywhere from $20 to $35 for every transaction you make while over the limit -- even if that transaction is itself for only a few dollars. But hey, it's all about teaching the customer not to make that mistake in the future, right?

hjalmeida/iStock/Getty Images

So they're like that other uncle then. The one with the belt.

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

Nope! Once the banks saw how much cash they could make from the fees, the next step was to carefully trick their customers into overdrawing their accounts more often. They do this by quietly manipulating the order in which your purchases are charged to your account to nail you with the maximum number of overdraft charges. We're talking "half of your goddamn money straight to the bank" numbers here.

Here's how it works. Let's say you have $100 in your checking account and you purchase the following items over the course of the day:

A pack of gum: $1

Two dildos (one for each ear): $15

Food: $20

Some gas: $10

The "Best Actor" Academy Award Steven Seagal won for Under Siege, bought from a street vendor named Handless Bob: $25

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

That still leaves you with $29. Hooray, you can manage your money!

woyzzeck/iStock/Getty Images

"Oooo, just enough to buy the actual Steven Seagal."

Ah, but you forgot to note that you had a $100 phone bill due the next day. Well, shit, that means one of those transactions will put you in the red, costing you a $35 fee. That's what you get for losing track of due dates, right?