From HuffPost Hill:
BANK OF AMERICA JUST BEGGING TO GO DOWN - Bank of America today announced that it would begin charging $5 per month for debit card usage, because defrauding homeowners and cashing taxpayer checks was no longer a winning business model. Well, they announced that first part, but they actually blamed Wall Street reform and a cap the Fed will put Saturday on the swipe fees they can charge merchants. Don't believe it: BofA is getting crushed in the market and simply wants your money. HuffPost Hill will eat its overdraft notices if these fees are still around a year from now. In January 2010, TCF Bank, which pioneered free checking in the 1980s, announced it would begin charging a monthly fee in response to Fed rules restricting overdraft charges. The move was regularly cited during the 2010 swipe fee fracas as evidence of the harm that would befall consumers if Dick Durbin didn't back off. This January, TCF brought back free checking after losing customers. But this isn't the worst crisis consumers have faced! One day before the Senate was expected to vote on delaying swipe fee reform, Chase went nuclear: Thanks to the Durbin amendment, thousands of Chase customers were warned, your kid can forget about that trip to Disney World. "Congress recently enacted a new law known as the Durbin Amendment that significantly impacts debit cards," reads the letter. "As a result of this law, we will be changing our debit rewards program. After July 21, 2011 you will no longer earn Disney Dream Reward Dollars when you use your Disney Rewards Debit Card." Which reminds us: Did we ever tell you about the great swipe fee fight?More from Ryan Grim and Zach Carter at HuffPost.
Funny, Bank of America wasn't so anti-government when they were sucking at the federal teat to the tune of tens of billions of dollars in bailout money (B of A got at least $45bn, from what I could find). This is how they pay us back.
