Will new fees for the use of debit cards prompt you to change your banking habits?

I might switch banks, but I suspect that all banks might follow suit and charge fees for debit card use.

Ideally, banks should start slashing the inflated salaries of their higher paid employees, just as health insurance companies should.

But, of course, they won’t.

Is it just me or does anyone else see the typical right wing hypocrisy in Clark’s post? If it wasn’t for the partisan slurs I could see his point, but because of them I had to think about his post in more depth.

I bet he jumps up and down screaming that government needs to cut spending, and not raise taxes (increase revenue). But I think the to big to fail banks need to do that exact thing too. I dropped wells fargo quite a while ago because of their growing ridiculous fee structure, and their un-scrupulous ways they would apply them. Like how they deduct debits largest to smallest, and then adding in deposits after in the hopes to generate over drafts and their associated fees. And if all these big bank executives hadn’t paid themselves exorbitant bonuses after accepting government bailout money they might have a leg to stand on too. Welfare is welfare when you’re not cashing the checks I guess.

If these too big to fail banks hadn’t gone and wrote mortgages to people they knew would never ever be able to pay them back, and when that policy bit them in the ass they go to the other extreme and hold on to their money instead of doing what they need to to get the economy going again, I might have a smidgen of respect for them. Instead of fees how about loaning some money so people can buy these vacant houses I see everywhere. Scrooge McDuck.

I personally am done with the big banks, and I hope others follow me in droves. As soon as you can get used to not having a branch office on every corner like they were McDonalds, credit unions look real good. It’s nice to get a little interest on your savings, instead of ridiculous fees. Just how often do you need to use the ATM in Moscow anyway?

Good point, most aren’t safe bear. That’s why it’s really better to leave the ATM card at home and just bring a visa or amex card and pay off the balance when you get home.

Personally the argument that ‘we are not making as much profit as we used to so we need to charge you more’ has never been persuasive. I plan to look for a good credit union and suggest others do the same.

Strongly suggest reading the economics book, “TANSTAAFL” The title translates to “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch”.

We appeart to be living in an era where many expect somehting for nothing or something where someone else pays.

This is not rocket science. At the core essence of freedom is persaonal property and accountability. Perhas instead of parents and shcools emphasizing “green”, emphasizing “diversity/tolerence’, emphasizing “political correctness” the masses always looking to be up in arms about somehting would recognize what it takes to build wealth in a free society.

The post by Clark is correct. What many fail to realize is that this banking move is the direct result of the Dodd-Frank regulatory bill. If people don’t over use their debit cards,if they learned to balance their accounts then they would never have had over draft fees. But Obama idiology says we have to protect the idiots from the evil banks yet, he looks the other way when it comes to the chief architect of control, the Federal Reserve bank that was supposed to be in existence for one person_ to maintain the value of the dollar, not to use policy to make a presidential admin. look good.

It is now past three weeks of the SEIU union organized protests on Wall Street but why has our President NOT said on word on this or attempted to stop the protests that are disrupting traffic and affecting non Wall Street every day people? Why is Obama silent on this?

Hmmmm_ lets take a look at who Obama surrounds himself with, it is not his main cabinet but low and behold, what we see is Trumpka from SEIU standing beside him at announcements and speeches! We also see Francis Fox Piven, the old little lady from the Bill Ayers era, the fomer SDS and Weathermen radical, she is the same one calling for civil disobedience. She said in an interview on NPR in 2010, ” where are the protesters, the youth to protest, we need them to rally, and maybe we need them to show some civil disobedience in the streets as we did in the 60’s.”

We see SEIU’s Steven Lerner on tape, calling for riots and attacks against CEO’s. In 2010, SEIU and ACORN busses pulled up to a CEO’s family home to mob their yard while his teenager son was home alone..the news covered that. Lerner called for protesting against capitalism and calling for civil unrest in the streets yet, OUR OWN PRESIDENT refuses to have Eric Holder investigate Lerner. Why? Because the elite Union leaders are his advisiors.

This banking issue is just a part of the far left movement toward “fundamentally changing America, as Obama spoke of. Today we see the protestors, organized from SEIU, to cry out against the ” Neo-liberals” That is done to try to distance Obama from this orchestrated movement of his cronnies by falsely implying the movement is not affiliated with him.

In the past three years, the game plan seems to be to use Class Warfare and Social Justice mantras to persuade people to give up their Republic of the USA. Recall it was Obama who said, ” spread the wealth is good for all…and there’s come a point when too much income is too much.” The great dictator will decide how much anyone can make?..Hmmm, what economic system does that sound like?

Th National Socialist Party used these same tactics in 1933 to take control. They used class warfare tactics as well, before openly blaming the Jews for their troubled economy.

So before we cry out against the evil banks know this fact: Banks were told that if they didn’t make the “no down payment ” low interest home loans to even those with no credit or no verified income, then they would be penalized in the rate from the Fed but, according to the Clinton ordered act, it states that banks could do the alternate if they choose not to make those bad loans by instead making contributions to ACORN. How is that for engineering and manipulating the system?

When too many bad loans were made, the risk got too high, then Fannie and Freddie Mac jumped in to guarantee the mortgages. Which now in Congress were involved in Fannie and Freddie, raking in huge bucks? Surprise_ Dodd and Barney Frank.

Today we should ask this: what is the bigger picture with George Soros’ stated goal of centralizing all banks as he calls for within his Open Society of one world economic governance?

If one looks closely at the recent Dodd-Frank bill we see that the political campaign contributors that manipulate company value (i.e., the hedge funds managers that are most influencing the day to day stock price) are completely__ isolated__ from any new regulation against them unless if involved in sale of gold bullion and transfer of such out of the country.

I hate to say it but that damn Glenn Beck predicted 2-3 years a go that these events would come ..he called the Arab Spring would spread, the gold price run up,the banks would be bailed again, that Libya Freedom rebel fighters would be from mostly Muslim terrorist groups, the Muslim Brotherhood would move in, the same terrorists that crossed the border to aid Palestine over the past ten years or more. Now the military has to go in with boots on the ground to find and secure the arsenals of weapons took by the so called freedom rebels from Quadafi’s compounds….great, we have hundreds of ground to air missiles loose and held by those who supported killing Americans.

If Obama respected the Republic and was not a smart puppet of the global order group, America would be better today.

I work in the financial services industry and am always amazed how the public believes there is no cost to maintaining the complex computer systems and security required for both debit and credit card transactions.========================== I for one do pay for real value. the US financial system has, however, fought off real innovation for decades infavor of their beauracratically entrenched business practices, technology and customer relationship model. the number one thing your business sector could do is to open the books on your operational costs – and evolve a pattern of keeping that information public. there is an excessive tendency to charge the “extreme case costs ” to every customer for a variety of similar – but less difficult to process – activities. Just an observation – but your CRM is strictly designed to justify draconan practices and not to evaluate where the institution can CUT customer costs. — essentially you only optimize for the bank. time to think about the customer as a shareholder.

Yep. If my bank starts charging fees I’ll either switch banks, maybe something small and local, or switch to cash.

But the banks are doing this because they have to remain profitable. Of course profitable means paying CEOs tens of millions of dollars. Hard to imagine how they could get by on any less.

It’s been a while, so there are probably some people who may not remember the pre-Debit Card era.

All Banks sold all of us on using ATM’s and debit cards as a way to reduce their overhead costs and avoid check charges, minimum balances, new extra charges and usage fees They created strong incentives to shift to automation over the personal banker and human tellers. Now, despite already charging over twice the amount of the cost of a transaction (about $.10 to $.12 per) they now see their cost-saving solutions as a profit opportunity.

I say, save the $60 per year debit card charge. Get rid of your debit card. Use the human tellers, use cash, write checks, use credit cards. If they start charging for those, switch to a better bank. We have been with W-F for 33 years (three accounts plus our mortgages). They have made HUGE amounts of money off of us. If our bank rewards us with further charges like these for the sole purpose of maintaining profits, think again. We will jump banks in an instant when that comes to us. There are plenty of good Credit Unions and banks out there that still care about their grassroots base.

@ Me who writes, “Shut up kim, no one wants to hear your delusional ramblings anymore.”

Please show all readers where anything written is not true. Then I will gladly accept your position.

The truth is never easy and it is often painful. When the Federal Reserve can no longer control all banking only then the free market will function and that_ will end the debit card fee because they can start to compete for solid customers instead of having to replace lost revenue from those of the ” wa wa wa…an over payment fee?_ but I am entitled to free everything” group, the wa wa wa whiners are the same that continually exceed their account balance which is no different than writing a bad check knowing the funds are not there….personal responsibility is the answer.

OMG!!! the kim/roul weirdo is glen beck!! I was thinking it was michelle bachmann, but couldn’t figure out how bachmann could find the time to post these long rambling tirades (even if they are just copy/pasted from teabaggerconspiracytheory.com or where ever it gets them), when mrs. bachmann spends all her time chasing cameras and spotlights around instead of doing her job.

I received a letter from the last retail bank with which I have an account outlining their new $15/month service fee for debit cards. I plan to close this account ASAP and will be moving the funds to an account with a local credit union where I earn 3.01% interest on up to $25,000, pay no service fees and get ATM fees from non-network machines refunded. Retail banks are sucking ordinary Americans dry. The exorbitant fees charged for “conveniences” and other predatory practices are leading to record profits and sky-high bank executive salaries while the middle class and poor languish.

I don’t need to change my bank or banking habits. I belong to a credit union.

We can use debit cards at Medical Marijuana dispensing machines?

I expect to limit or eliminate debit card use and move to writing checks and paying cash.

@CF who wrote, “I wonder what college educated, overpaid CEO thought of this one. (i.e..debit card fees)

One only has to read the Dodd-Frank Bill they passed in the DFL led Congress to get your answer.

It sure wasn’t the idiots that protest on Wall Street and tried to close the bridge. Maybe MPR should ask the Question about who and what are these protests??? I was dumbfounded to hear the interviews of these protests aying, ” In Egypt they protested and closed down the government,…or, we need a fair system and over throw capitalism..or…we can’t have them making $500,000 a year.” AND Obama says nothing but gives quiet support for this far left radical progressive fascism..wow, no wonder he won’t be re-elected in 2012 and it won’t be because his boys caused debit card fees.

Those idiots don’t understand that corporations do not pay taxes, they just pass the cost along to consumers. Excess regulations and high frequency trading are the real issues. Hedge funds ought to be limited to long trading, when shorting a stock betting it will fall, leads to George Soros antics. Recall that George Soros was the one who wrecked havoc by shorting the British pound…wiping out millions of pensioners savings. Soros was hye one who went on and on in his inteviews about how fun that was and how he got addicted to collapsing regimes in other parts of the world..and he lives among us and supports Obama so what does that say about our Lead from Behind Obama???

Kim, even if every single one of your assertions were factually accurate, that doesn’t mean you’re speaking the truth. Truth also has to do with the inferences one draws from one’s facts. In the case of your screeds, many of your supposed inferences are nothing more than innuendoes. Take, for instance, Obama’s association with Bill Ayers. Yes, it’s true. It exists. What does that mean? Does it mean Obama approves of what the Weather Underground used to do, or the ideology that drove it? No! Maybe you have an ideological litmus test for people you claim as friends, but most folks don’t. How about the fact that he listens to people like Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan? That doesn’t mean he agrees with everything they say. An intelligent, thoughtful person will listen to a variety of opinions, not just those one already agrees with.

I have a friend who’s a radical libertarian, to the point that he borders on being an anarchist. Does that make me an anarchist? Certainly not. But if I were a target of one of your rants, you could point out that association and then wonder when I might start throwing molotov cocktails. I have another friend who’s a self-professed communist and an ardent pacifist. Does that association make me one, too? That would be a spurious inference. In college, I read the Communist Manifesto. I wrote a paper on it. I said I agreed with some of Marx’s points. Does that make me a marxist? You wouldn’t say so if were to read the whole paper I wrote, where I ripped his overall theory to shreds. But that wouldn’t matter in one of your postings here. You would quote the snippets where I acknowledged some minor points where I thought Marx was correct and then conclude I was an enemy of America.

That’s why I don’t need to research the accuracy of your “facts” to know that your assertions are not worth taking seriously. But even at that, why should I assume you’re getting the “facts” right, when you keep making such a basic mistake as referring to the “DFL led Congress”? Once again, Kim, the DFL is the Minnesota branch of the Democratic party. No one outside Minnesota is a DFL-er.

More of the same, Kim. Only this time you begin with a demonstrable falsehood: “For the record, Obama was tight with Rev, Wright until he was elected…..” Are you too young to remember the fact that he publicly broke with Wright’s church before he had even secured the nomination? And then there’s the question of whether his association with Wright even matters. Do you go to church, Kim? Do you agree with everything the preacher says?

And then you end with another ridiculous comment: “The only thing [Obama] has done well is increase drone attacks….” Are you telling us you don’t approve of his taking single-payer off the table before work even started on health care reform? If he’s really the radical leftist you try to paint him as, why would he do that?

Keep writing, Kim. Every time you do, you give more evidence of how silly ideologies of all sorts are. Folks like you are not looking for the truth. You’re only looking for support for what you already believe.

I am cutting up my debit card and will use checks or cash through my CREDIT UNION! I took my money out of the preditory vaults decades ago. Banks have since the beginning of time been bloodsuckers without collective conscience. When money is your bottom line and growth is your only goal you will do anything to your cusyomers to take what you want for whatever bogus justifiction you can come up wih. Preditory , pure an simple! That’s where we are. It will change because it is immorral. and will not be born by the public!

In defense of banks… sort of….

Lets compare ATM’s, debit card readers and money transaction networks with Dynamic Random Access Memory, or DRAM for short. If you are reading this you have DRAM in your PC or Mac. Back in the early 90’s I remember paying $700+ for a mere 20 Meg of memory. Today you can buy 2 Gig(!) of memory for about 40 bucks!!

Why?

Because in the early days of mass production of PC components it was very expensive to develop and deploy new DRAM technology. But as a result of mainstreaming of mass production and the payoff of the initial investment, (thanks to us early adopters), the cost of DRAM is a very small fraction of what it was at it’s introduction.

As with electronic banking, the same was true. Big Bank Inc. had to invest in new servers, networks, ATM machines and card readers. So Big Bank Inc. charged merchants a fee to pay for this new infrastructure. Fair enough. BUT that was two decades ago. Like DRAM the system is already in place and long since been paid for and only now requires upgrades and maintenance. And the cost of operating the electronic transactions system if FAR less costly than old fashioned paper checks.

Unlike manufacturers of DRAM who realized the only way to progress was to lower prices as a result of market conditions after their recovery of the cost of the initial investment, Big Bank Inc. is under no such constraints. Because he who holds the money holds the power. As in the same manner as drug dealers, (illegal or otherwise).

I wonder. Where is the outrage over evil Big Bank Inc that there was over evil Big Tobacco? After all, didn’t Big Bank Inc get us hooked on card readers and is now bleeding us dry?