The hardest part about writing about Bank of America’s dunderheaded plan to impose a $5-a-month fee on debit card users is deciding which of the many juicy angles to pursue. “Have Bank of America’s Managers Lost Their Minds?” asked The American Banker earlier this week. That’s one good angle. Then there’s the “are we really supposed to start using cash again?” angle. Or the Durbin angle — Senator Dick Durbin being the Illinois senator whose amendment to the new financial reform law, imposing a steep reduction in bank interchange fees, “forced” banks to search for ways to make up for the lost revenue. There’s even a presidential angle, with President Obama saying on Monday that banks didn’t have “some inherent right” to a certain level of profits — and then more or less withdrawing the remark the next day. Me, I’m going with the gouging angle. The revenue that Bank of America, and many other banks, is seeking to replace with its new fees is lucre that a more honorable profession would never have touched in the first place. Indeed, 30 years ago, banks themselves would have turned their backs on it. Of course, back then, banks viewed customers as people to be helped, not marks to be taken advantage of. It was, to be sure, a different world then, with regulated interest rates, the Glass-Steagall Act preventing banks from getting into lucrative trading and a sleepy business model that valued a steady dividend over a highflying stock price. As interest rates were deregulated, Glass-Steagall abolished and investors demanding that bank stocks perform like Internet stocks, that ethos changed. Banks began looking in some dark corners for new revenue; this is when hidden fees began to creep into credit-card agreements, for instance.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/08/op...ml?ref=opinion
Note: October 7, 2011