The Fee Hand of the Market 0

This does not affect me.

I don’t use my debit card to buy things. I use either a credit card or that green stuff, whadyyacallit, oh, yeah, cash (emphasis added):

The thought of another bank fee really bothers Whitney Chitwood.

“It’s our money that we work hard for, and they’re just taking it from us,” said Chitwood, 22, who has a Bank of America checking account.

Next year, Bank of America Corp. plans to impose a $5 a month fee when customers use their debit cards for a purchase, whether they punch in a personal identification number or sign a receipt. Other banks, including Wells Fargo and SunTrust, are initiating similar fees in some markets.

The banks began initiating the fees in response to federal legislation, which took effect Oct. 1, that limits the “swipe” fees they can charge merchants for debit-card transactions. Bank officials say the fees will help offset the billions in revenue they expect to lose as a result of the new ceiling.

(Much more at the link.)

When I see persons whipping out the plastic to buy a 79-cent cup of coffee, I always wonder how they keep up with their checkbooks. (Then, when I read about the outrageous overdraft fees, I realized that they don’t.)

It highlights the larger issue, though: a change in the nature of banking as an industry over the past three decades. It has moved from valuing honest stewardship of customer accounts and secure, though not spectacular, profits from sound loans to high-stakes casino gambling.

Banks became gambling addicts, but, since they were the house and the house always wins, they guaranteed their winnings, changing the rules of the game to suit their greed need and burying those changes in unreadable “terms of service” notices that no one read because they were designed to be unreadable. Collectively, we now have the First National Bank of Rocky and Mugsy.

Now that reforms are mandating that they fix the wheel so it isn’t quite so crooked, banksters are looking for new ways to fix the wheel.

My father was a banker. He would be ashamed to admit that today.