The market seems to want to go up each day as it has relentlessly almost every trading session since April. But yesterday, it had a tiny setback after the FOMC announcement. Today the culprit was housing. The National Association of Realtors said existing home sales declined 2.7% in August. Every economist worth his salt said the number would rise.

Good news on the unemployment front did give the market an early boost this morning. Within an hour, though, bad news on the housing sales front wiped out the gains and moved the major indices into negative territory, where they have remained.

Here were today's unofficial closing numbers:

Dow 9,706.99 -41.56 (-0.43%)
S&P 500 1,050.78 -10.09 (-0.95%)
Nasdaq 2,107.61 -23.81 (-1.12%)

According to research released by the Center for Responsible Lending, people ages 18-24 pay an average of $3 in overdraft fees for every dollar they are overdrawn, compared with $2 paid by all adults.

This is likely a result of young people using debit cards more frequently, and for smaller purchases. Overdrawn by 19 cents on that bottle of water? You could be hit with a $25 dollar fee. According to the USA Today, "Congress is considering a bill sponsored by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., that requires, among other things, that banks warn customers before they overdraw, so they have the option to back out of the transaction."

I can't wait to watch the banks justify their opposition to a bill like that -- or to see politicians oppose it in line with their campaign contributions. After all, there is no all-powerful Poor College Student's Lobby. Poor college students are more likely to sleep in the lobby.

But why shouldn't consumers be given the option of deciding to forgo a bottle of water and save $25? Can anyone honestly make some sort of rational argument as to why people shouldn't be warned before they are hit with an overdraft fee?

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?