Earlier this month on BloggingStocks, I expressed my support for the idea of credit cards for teenagers. I quoted respected personal finance guru Laura Rowley, who wrote this about the credit card industry: "I think those companies are a potentially dangerous enemy, and you have to prepare your child to be a worthy opponent in battle. You want them to conquer this prospective foe, and transform it into a humble servant that does their bidding."

This weekend, The New York Times took the opposite perspective. The piece talks about the cards that are a "hybrid" of credit cards -- Visa gift cards that can be used anywhere Visa is accepted for example. The piece quotes several experts who don't think these products are good for kids. The theory is that kids don't really understand how plastic works, and that they need the feeling of cold hard cash passing from their hands in order to understand the seriousness of money.

According to The Times, these cards "encourage youngsters to assume that money always comes in plastic and that they should spend whatever is on their cards because that's why the cards are there."

But that's where parents should come in. These hybrid cards provide a set of training wheels for kids to learn about how charging purchases works -- in a fail-soft, supervised environment. And consumer credit is a fact of life. With all the benefits that can come from the responsible (i.e., paying it off every month) use of credit -- convenience, frequent flyer miles, etc. -- avoiding plastic is just not intelligent or realistic.

Parents can use these cards to help their kids learn, and that's exactly what they should do. It's all part of transforming the industry into a "humble servant" that can do your child's bidding.

One of my close friends called me to complain that she had over $100 in overdraft fees because of a total of $16 worth of Red Bull, cigarettes, and chips -- all paid for at different times. She hadn't realized how close her checking account was to a zero balance, and was assessed a separate overdraft for each purchase, even though they were as low as $.69. It's hard for me to see those fees as anything other than a bank milking a young, inexperienced client (no, customer) for money she couldn't afford. When I talked to her dad about it, the word he used was "evil."

These overdraft charges are not a convenience to prevent bounced checks. As Laura Rowley writes, "Do the math. You may find that you paid an effective 3,000 percent annual interest rate on a courtesy loan you never asked for."

Ms. Rowley makes a number of points about how abusive the system is, and I agree with all of them. Banks should be less evil, and the Consumer Overdraft Protection Fair Practices Act should be passed.

But there's another side to this. As Rowley points out, most people who suffer from overdraft charges are lower-income. Many have their credit cards through separate banks, and don't use the bank for mortgages or other cash-cow services that banks provide. So how can a bank make a buck off people with little in the way of assets? Overdraft fees -- a game of "gotcha" that is absolutely predatory. But can you really blame them that much?