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.
