Citigroup, SunTrust, B of A, Wells Fargo decline comment on possible new fee for deposits

Unhappy with the airline industry’s leadership in fleecing customers by nickel-and-diming them to death, the big banks might just opt to start charging customers a “fee” for the honor of depositing money in your own savings account.

That’s been the chatter this past week, after the Federal Reserve raised the possibility of cutting a key interest rate it pays banks. The Fed is looking for additional ways to help stimulate the economy, including the possibility of providing banks an incentive to loan out their money, rather than just parking it at the Fed.

When a number of experts started wondering aloud as to whether this might cause banks to charge customers for making savings deposits, JP Morgan said no-way, while a number of other tops banks “declined to comment.”   Those mum on whether they might fleece their own customers including Citigroup, Bank of America, SunTrust, and Wells Fargo, according to USA Today.

You gotta love the banks.  Not satisfied with billion dollar bonuses, and hundred billion dollar bailouts, now they might just need to charge us to give them our money so that they can go and make even more money off of it.

And it’s so out of character for the big banks, who have been nothing short of the perfect corporate citizen these past many years since we saved their collective behinds.

Or not.

Who can forget the time that Bank of America was sued for allegedly rewarding its employees for pushing customers into foreclosure?

Then there were the LIBOR banks who colluded in an effort to make gobs of money at all of our expense.

And there was the time the Royal Bank of Scotland was set to pay nearly $1.5bn in bonuses after losing $1.7bn.

Or the time the big banks collectively got ready to pay out $65bn in bonuses just a year after we bailed them out.

Or the time the banks fleeced unemployed people.

Or the time the banks were refusing to release $208 million in relief for Hurricane Sandy victims.

And keep in mind, as Chris had reported a while back, the banks get every year from the federal government a subsidy of $780 billion, an amount equal to the entire multi-year stimulus for the rest of us. Elizabeth Warren got into this issue earlier this. Here’s of our reporting on that:

Elizabeth Warren got into this subsidy with Fed Chair Bernanke the other day at a Senate hearing, where Bernanke agreed with her that we ought to get rid of the subsidy.  And this was just the $83 billion estimate that they were talking about, not the newer, nearly ten times larger, $780 billion.

Elizabeth Warren: So I understand that we’re all trying to get to the end of “too big to fail.” But my question, Mr. Chairman, is until we do, should those biggest financial institutions be repaying the American taxpayer that $83 billion subsidy that they are getting?…It is working like an insurance policy. Ordinary folks pay for homeowners insurance. Ordinary folks pay for car insurance. And these big financial institutions are getting cheaper borrowing to the tune of $83 billion in a single year simply because people believe that the government would step in and bail them out. And I’m just saying, if they are getting it, why shouldn’t they pay for it?

Chairman Bernanke: I think we should get rid of it.