Bank of America learned pretty quickly last month that customers think $5 a month is too much to pay to use a debit card. But is there such a thing as a reasonable bank fee? One in three people say they're prepared to walk away from their financial institution to avoid a fee, a new survey reveals.
"It felt like the world was on fire," recalls financial writer Andrew Ross Sorkin, whose book Too Big To Fail covers the crisis at its peak. In an interview, he discusses the meltdown, its aftermath, the quest for power on Wall Street and why more regulation is still needed.
Obama wants European governments to keep spending to stave off an economic slowdown. Europe, particularly Germany, doesn't want to hear about it. Expect a fractious debate at the Toronto summit meeting of G-20 industrial countries this weekend.
With new laws clamping down on some credit card and account fees, banks are likely to find other ways to offset the lost income. Among the possibilities: Hefty increases in annual credit card fees or an end to free checking.
One of the key questions facing Congress as it labors to reconcile the House and Senate bills is this: Three years after the financial crisis began, how much risk should America's banks be allowed to take? Not surprisingly, opinions differ greatly.
What's needed is an approach that shifts incentives so that bankers can effectively regulate themselves. They should get paid based on a share of their customers' long-term investment returns, and they wouldn't get bonuses if their banks violated capital requirements.
In the wake of the mortgage loan mess and financial crisis, Congress was hot to regulate this business. But the federal-level effort has lost steam, partly because lawmakers seem to have come around to the industry's point of view rather than the consumer's.
Top senators from both parties were closer to breaking a logjam on broader financial regulatory overhaul after agreeing to the creation of a new consumer-protection division within the Federal Reserve.
