These hallway bullies already have our lunch money; now they’re after our caps, shoelaces and bubblegum—anything they can grab.
Okay, Bank of America, I get it.
First, you dig into the pockets of every taxpaying American for billions of dollars in revival money. It isn’t strong enough to say we begrudgingly obliged. Taxpayers were pinned down by bully one and bully two while bully three turned their pockets inside out. We heard the rhetoric about too big to fail, and maybe that’s true; maybe we are better off than if we’d let the giant banks go under.
But then, in spite of the foul stench created by loans going bad, you go buy up companies like Countrywide, the poster boy for mortgage indiscretions. Any half-decent review of their books would have revealed the woefully inadequate research done in advance of issuing the mortgages—to the point of being fraud. Now we know why the catchphrase isn’t “too smart to fail.” If Bank of America was in the real estate business there’d be no price too high to pay for Chernobyl acreage or oceanfront estates on the shores of Arizona.
But now? Surely now that we’ve bailed out the banks, they throw the lowly depositor a bone, right? Of course not. These hallway bullies already have our lunch money; now they’re after our caps, shoelaces and bubblegum—anything they can grab. Starting in 2012, Bank of America customers who plan to use their debit cards can expect to pay $5.00 per month, every month. You read that right. Take out your debit card at Costco, or WalMart, or BP just once, and bang. Money well spent, huh?
Of course, it doesn’t stop with Bank of America. ABCNews reports that Wells Fargo and JPMorgan are each testing $3.00 debit fees of their own. What does this mean? Most consumers will end up paying the $5.00 fee no matter how hard they try to avoid it. This isn’t capitalism, this is exploitation. Months ago TCO predicted the rise of such fees, and this won’t be the last one. It’s baffling in light of this that congress seeks less regulation, leaving consumers with only one recourse for the time being: remain vigilant.
Assisted by David Martin and Zachary A. Kady