Hacked off customers complaining about the new $5 per month fee to use your debit card shut down the bank’s website over the weekend.
It will be about five seconds before Congress bans the fee, I bet. The irony here that was not noted by most of the press is that the bank wanted to go on charging retailers for debit swipes as they always had — and even had an army of lobbyists fight against lowering the fees banks like BofA charged retailers. But Barney Frank’s finance reform bill slashed the fees banks are paid by retailers anyway. So BofA and other banks have to make up the difference the only other place it could — from customers.
Don’t get me wrong. The country’s big banks are just one step above organized crime rings in the heirarchy of criminal conspiracy, as the past decade has demonstrated. (Sometimes not even that far removed, like when they launder drug money for the drug cartels, as Wachovia did.) They deserve everything they get. But so does Barney Frank and the Democrat Congress of 2009.
I’m just saying …
