Here&#39;s the New Way ATMs Will Screw YouS

You know how money, and by extension the oppressive global system of debt and credit that lives within its rotting husk, is just, like the worst? It's going to get marginally worse. Reuters' Felix Salmon flags the above shot of an ATM charging either $3 or 3% of the total withdrawal.

That's just one ATM in a Holiday Inn in Orlando, but there's no law that prevents ATMs from rendering their absurd rents as percentages rather than as flat fees. So your clever strategy of dulling the blow of fees by taking out a lot of money at once? Useless. And, of course, strip clubs are leading the way:

I've never heard of anything like this before, although a bit of Googling turns up one page, aimed at ATM owners, saying that "Adult Entertainment clubs" frequently charge a percentage at their ATMs, and that although anybody going down this path "risks losing some transactions", on the other hand it's superior to simply capping the maximum withdrawal amount at some low level.

On the web, innovations are frequently found first on porn sites, and then work their way slowly into the mainstream; it seems the same thing is happening here, with strip-club innovations turning up at the Holiday Inn.

[Reuters, image via @petereavis]