ScreamingEagle
Gold Member
- Jul 5, 2004
- 13,399
- 1,707
- 245
Goodbye free checking and now hello to debit card fees.......moving costs from big retailers to the customers.....gee thanks Dicky D....is this what you Dimwits call paying a "fair share".....and helping the American people by losing even more jobs....?
Read the headlines -- and your bank statement -- and weep, but don't say TAS didn't warn you.
As I detailed here in February in "Dick Durbin Is Stealing Your Free Checking," thanks to price controls on debit card transactions from the Durbin Amendment of the 2010 Dodd-Frank "financial reform" law, free checking is going the way of the dodo bird. The Durbin price controls on interchange fees -- the so-called "swipe fees" that retailers pay to bank and credit unions that process debit card transactions, go into effect this Saturday, October 1, and are already showing more dire effects than originally predicted.
Not only is free checking disappearing at a rapid pace -- a new Bankrate.com survey detailed in USA Today found that only 45% of non-interest bank checking accounts are free, down from 65% in 2010 and 76% two years ago, and that the average monthly fee for non-interest checking accounts is $4.37, up 75 percent from last year -- but ordinary Americans will soon be hit by new monthly fees for using their debit cards. And new evidence shows that the price controls may be causing thousands of job losses as well.
On Thursday, Bank of America announced a new $5 monthly fee for debit card usage, citing the Dodd-Frank price caps that will force retailer interchange fees down from an average of 44 cents to 21 cents and cause banks to lose half their revenue from this service. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) blasted Bank of America and disclaimed any responsibility for his measure causing these new fees. "It's overt, unfair and I hope their customers have the final say," Durbin told the Hill.
But thanks to Durbin's rule, BofA's customer and other ordinary consumers may have nowhere to go. According to the Associated Press, regional banks are following suit: "SunTrust, a regional bank based in Atlanta, began charging a $5 debit card fee on its basic checking accounts this summer. Regions Financial, which is based in Birmingham, Ala., plans to start charging a $4 fee next month."
The American Spectator : Debit Durbin
Last edited: