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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (April 19, 1984)
Page 6B/The Battalion/Thursday, April 19,1984 New York changing bank check clearing policies A United Press International |r l: lull h NEW YORK — If your bank ever has denied you access to your money or charged you for “unavailable” funds you know are available take heart, your day may be at hand. Check clearing up to now has been left to the discretion of banks whose policy ranges from giving immediate access to ac cess on the day a check actually clears to holding money for 30 days. Banks also have dramatically increased to as much as $20 their charges for “unavailable funds,” money that you deposit but which the bank decrees not yet usable. New York’s recent legislation mandating the time a bank can take to clear checks was prompted by such “outrages that show a total disregard for the consumer,” said State Bank ing Superintendent Vincent Tese, who was charged by the legislature with implementing £ the law. i “Our concerns were two fold,” Tese said, “to clear the largest number of checks in the shortest time and to insure the safety and soundness of the banking system in this state.” Tese believes it is only a mat ter of time before a standard is adopted nationwide. He has tes tified before the House banking committee, whose chairman Rep. Fernand St Germain, D.- R.I., has sponsored legislation (HR-5301) that is similar to the New York law. “Banks move slower than the old Pony Express in processing checks, and I may he libeling Pony Express by suggesting it moved as slowly. ” •flaws Koxb RESTAURANT 4- : 4 The issue has such great con sumer appeal that passage is al most certain. “Banks move slower than the old Pony Express in processing checks, and I may be libeling Pony Express by suggesting it moved as slowly,” St Germain said. St Germain has been ham mering at federal regulators, but he believes the voluntary program they have come up with doesn’t really change any thing. There is a reason for the foot-dragging. Banks earn mil lions investing the money de posited in checking accounts in short-term instruments, such as the overnight federal funds market, during the “unavail able” period. Bring the subject up in al most any group and you'll get a chorus of “horror” stories. Take the woman who owned stock in a New York bank and had all of her accounts in the same bank. She received a divi dend check on her bank stock, deposited it in the bank and was told she would have to wait 18 days to use the money because the check was written on a Bos ton bank. Or the woman who deposited her sizable U.S. Treasury re fund check in a major clearing house bank and was told it couldn’t be used for 10 days be cause “it might bounce.” “The department was con stantly getting complaints,” Tese said. “There were stories of 30-day wails and many of them were from people on So cial Security or government as sistance who live from day-to- day.” He said in virtually all cases banks get money from government checks within 24 hours. Tese believes the law was ap proached “in a respond sonable manner.” Banks may take one luj day to clear all cheds $ 1 00 and all goverm checks. Maximum clearuj lays on other checks ran^ two to eight days depend the locality of the bai which a check is written.H institutions are givenonti day than commercialbanti “The losses to banks wii old system were small b; built in safeguards to i® even that ratio," Tese said Excluding goverm checks, banks can settliti policy on checks of mort $2,500 and all foreign died Mr Fresh, authentic Chinese euisine at reasonable prices “Quality Health Food” Taste our Lemon Chicken! Ken’s Automotive 421 S. Main — Bryan 822-2823 OH SMAtL PARTIES AND BANQUETS WELCOMED Serving wine and beer Mon. - Sun. Mon. - Sat. 11 am - 2 pm 5 pm - 10 pm a 0> QC O Z3 < at .9» CL E o "A Complete Automotiye g* Service Center" 3 Tune-Ups . 0 . "~ Clutches # Brakes J <D > c Cocaine abuse spreading to Wall Street businesses 3805 TEXAS AV. - BRYAN Brakes Front End Parts Replacement Standard Transmission Repairs GM Computer Testing All American Cars Datsun-Honda Toyota 10% Discount with Student i.d. on parts (Master Card A VISA Accepted) United Press International 31 CD OPEN SATURDAYS A Prairie Home R0MPANI0N 1 NEW YORK — In the simple old days, Wall Street worried about losing promising young businessmen to alcoholism. Lately, the problem has be come multiple drug and alcohol dependencies among upwardly mobile under-40s. “You’re seeing the end of the pure alcoholic,” said Peter To paz, administrator at the Lowell Institute in Manhattan. “It’s not very common to find people' under age 40 on just one sub stance.” The Lowell Institute is a pri vate psychiatric service that treats people with drug and al cohol problems. Its upscale cli entele includes a large number of business executives. The 1980s may be the age of health and abstinence for young urban professionals who prefer aerobics to alcohol, “but that’s just one part of Wall Street,” said Topaz. “The other part is deeply involved (in drugs). Almost any alley on Wall Street has its own dealer. Almost every building in the S arment center has its own ealer. You can watch drug deals going on in the lobby of the World Trade Center.” Alcohol abuse still is the most widespread problem by far. But it appears to have leveled off, while cocaine abuse “seems to be on the rise dramatically,” said Dr. Jonathan Lampert, head of Lowell Institute. For Lampert’s patients, co caine use has become the center of their lives. Some spend $1,000 a day on drugs. “I have one patient who says he literally spent a million dollars on co caine,” Lampert said. “Even if he’s exaggerating, you can imagine hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s overwhelming.” The “hotbeds" of cocaine use are in the music industry, ad vertising, the garment industry and “the whole Wall Street fi nancial area,” Topaz said. The drug is particularly attractive to “high intensity, wheeler-dealer type personalities” who are at tracted by the sense of endless energy and self-confidence it gives them. Ad Forum, a trade magazine for marketing management, re cently conducted a three-month investigation into cocaine use in the advertising and marketing industries. “It’s far more widespread in the ad industry than it used to be," said editor JoshuaL( “It’s now seeping down I the executive offices to lower levels — evenasfar mailroom." Lampert said he can stand the attraction of a like cocaine for people lilt 1 Street traders, whose) quire intense concentrai ergy and self-confidence “But most people abuse drugs, even in pit situations like that," he Predisposition to alo drug addiction maybegi T opaz said. “I believeal third of the population in ire t able to addictive Probably up to 15 percenil go active. The more sin the job, the more likely vii going to have people some chemicals for relief. TiMTTJTiJn/lifZ The Newest From Lake Wobegon Powciermilk Biscuit T-shirts £ Postcards, Lake Wobegon T-shirts, Whippet Team Caps 4- Patches, Garrison Keillors book Mappy To Be Here, plus assorted record albums and the newly released News from Lake Wobegon cassettes.. . for all of you shy persons out there. 5esure-tofune in, Saturdays7f-'ll on KAM.U-BA. Whole Earth Provision Company Where Quality Makes the Difference 105 E>oyetfc College Station 846-8794 Just Prelease Your Furniture before May 31st, and We’ll Deliver it FREE!!! 5 Packages Tailored to Your Personal Tastes and Comfort. Freshman Package $39.95 Sophomore Package $49.95 Junior Package $59.95 Senior Package $69.95 ' Graduate Package $79.95 AH Packages consist of a complete Living Room. Dining Room and Bedroom. (Individual Pieces Also Available) DEPENDS ON AVAI1.ABILITY STYLES SUBJECT TO CHANGE RENT NOW AND SAVE $ Ceiuihed FURNITURE RENTAL 913-D Harvey Road Woodstone Shopping Center College Station. Texas 77840 ^409^76^0^ Signing bags to better quail United Press International ... V 8^^ 'iiiivriifr TRENTON, N.J. — They are used and abused, and most people handle them dozens of times a week, but they have one thing in common with a price less painting, an important let ter or the Declaration of Inde pendence. The lowly paper bag, just like a Picasso painting, now has a signature revealing the identity of its maker. “We use the signature to in still pride into the person mak ing the bags,” said Ted Duffy, manager of retail packaging for Union Camp Corp. of Wayne, NJ. “It also tells you, if there is a quality problem, who ran the bag so you can go back and talk to the person,” Duffy said. The practice of putting a sig nature on the bottom of a bag is relatively new and not wide spread. For some who do, it seems to work. Verlon Rowe, general man ager of the bag and sack divi sion for Georgia Pacific’s Rich mond, Va., plant, cooked up the idea of bag signatures two- and-a-half years ago when the company was having problems with defective bags. One bag manufacturer used to identify its paper bags with Indian names or the names of animals, Rowe said. John Morgan works at the Georgia Pacific plant. He said signing the bag makes him “personally committed” to doing a good job. "You can go back and» work you’ve done. I eve looking (in stores) when to bag (groceries)," said. “I have a lotoffriend they pick up the bagsands didn't know you wort Georgia Pacific.'” G f Not all companies aret ested in the signatureappn “We’re just following ok tablished procedures ai never changed it,” saidl Anaya, administrative mi of Trinity Paper and 1 Co. of Elizabeth, N.J, does not require its emp to sign their work. “We code our bags, shows which machinetnefi made on, what date the) 1 made and on which shift ! that information we cai who made the bajr,” he “For some companies, it's signing) just a program of ognition.” The brown paper bag« vented in 1883 when Cl« Stillwell developed a maefc fe of 1 make bags with pleatedsids In. i n gussets, and a square flai Is “p tom. 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