October 5, 2011
I am writing to express my outrage at the corporate greed by big banks like Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo who are blaming wall street reforms and swipe fee reform for ending free checking, debit rewards programs and instituting new $3 to $5 debit card fees on consumers to charge us for using our own money when making electronic transactions.
When the Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform Act passed it passed with the Durbin Amendment requiring the Federal Reserve to cap debit card interchange or swipe fee electronic payments the big banks could charge retailers for processing such fees. This was and is entirely reasonable -- as the banks were charging more to process the fees than the cost to them for processing fees. As if this wasn't worse enough Bank of America (BAC) or BofA as its also called just last month announced 30,000 layoffs -- its firing workers in a tough economy. When the national unemployment rate is really 16% which is bad (federal projection is 9.1% but doesn't include unemployed 99ers who ran out of benefits etc which is also bad) for them to be firing workers is not good.
I urge federal agencies like the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Securities Exchange Commission, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stand up for consumers. Regulators need to protect consumers from the corporate greed of the big banks.