Citi Is Latest To Hike Fees On Checking Accounts. Bankers Know We Are Too Weak To Fight Back

Big Bankers Are Sticking It To Us Again. Their Message: If You Impose Regulations On What We Can Charge For One Of Our Profit Centers, We Will Ram It Up Your A*s On Another. Aren’t You Sick And Tired Of This Yet? How Much More Are You Going To Take, Sheeple?

Wake Up America!

The fees keep coming. Citi is the latest big bank to slap customers with a round of fee hikes. This time, on its checking accounts.

Starting in December, customers who hold its mid-level Citibank Account will be charged $20 a month if they fail to maintain a minimum balance of $15,000 in their combined accounts. Previously, account holders had to carry a minimum balance of $6,000.

At the same time, customers who have the bank's EZ Checking account will start being charged $15 a month if they don't carry a minimum balance of $6,000. Citi says it is phasing out the EZ Checking package, which currently carries no monthly fee for balances over $1,500, and is instead offering customers either the Citibank Account or its Basic Banking account, which also carries a fee.

Last month, Citi said it is hiking the fee on its Basic Banking account from $8 to $10. Customers will be able to avoid paying the $10 fee by either maintaining a minimum balance of $1,500 or by making one direct deposit and one automatic online payment through their checking account each month, said Citi.

Currently, account holders must make five transactions per month in order to avoid paying the fee and there is no minimum balance requirement.
9 most annoying bank fees

Citi's fee hikes come just days after Bank of America announced it would charge a $5 fee for debit card purchases. Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase Sun Trust and Regions Financial have all also rolled out similar fees in select markets in recent weeks.

"The regulatory environment has changed a great deal -- particularly with the Durbin Amendment -- and we're seeing the results of that now," said Claes Bell, banking reporter with Bankrate.com. Going forward, "we're going to see more large national banks announce fees."

With the new regulation that caps how much revenue banks can get from the swipe fees they collect from merchants, banks must look for other ways to cover that lost income, explained Nessa Feddis, vice president and senior counsel of the American Bankers Association.

"We don't expect to pay nothing to ride the train, it's the same thing with a checking account," she said.
Bank accounts: Get a fair shake, not a shakedown

Citibank said it chose not to charge a debit card fee because its customers did not want it. "There's a reason why we structured it this way," said Catherine Pulley, spokeswoman for Citi. There are also no hidden fees, Pulley added, and customers will benefit from free online bill pay and free access to non-Citi ATM machines.

While the majority of checking accounts were free last year, less than half now come without a price tag, according to a recent study from bank-comparison site Bankrate, which looked at 243 interest and 238 non-interest accounts.

Like Citi's new offerings, 92% of checking accounts have fee waivers, meaning that if you can meet certain financially requirements, most checking accounts are -- or could become -- free.

Article by Jessica Dickler, CNN Money

Homeowners Foreclose On Bank Of America. Sweet Justice! (VIDEO)

Let's hope this is the beginning of a trend! Let Big Banks know that they are subject to the same rules as the rest of us and maybe they will start to play fair. 

Wake Up America.. We CAN slay the giants 

  

Sweet Justice! 

That's how foreclosure defense attorney Todd Allen described the feeling of going to a Bank of America branch in Naples, Fla. to seize their assets.

Faced with a pair of sheriff's deputies locking down his building, the branch manager capitulated and handed over a check for $2,534. The sum was to cover Allen's fees from a case where he represented clients that the bank had tried to foreclose on -- despite the fact that they paid for their home in cash.

According to the News-Press in Fort Myers, Bank of America opened their case against Warren and Maureen Nyergers in February of 2010 and voluntarily dropped it two months later, but never coughed up for the couple's legal fees as ordered by a judge.

Sheriff's deputies, movers, and the Nyergers' attorney went to the bank and foreclosed on it. The attorney gave instructions to to remove desks, computers, copiers, filing cabinets and any cash in the teller's drawers.

After about an hour of being locked out of the bank, the bank manager handed the attorney a check for the legal fees.

The foreclosure nightmare started when Warren and Maureen Nyerges paid cash for a home owned by Bank of American in the Golden Gate Estates. They never had a mortgage whatsoever. But, the bank fouled it up and wound up issuing a foreclosure through their attorney.

The couple took their case to court and after a year and a half nightmare the foreclosure was dropped. A Collier County judge said Bank of America has to pay the couple's $2,534 legal fees for the error. After more than five months the bank still hadn't paid up. So, the homeowners' attorney did just what the bank would do to get their money, legally seize their assets.

"I instructed the deputy to go in and take desks, computers, copiers, filing cabinets, including cash in the drawers," Attorney Todd Allen told WINK News.

Outside the Bank of America on Davis Boulevard, several deputies stood by with movers ready to start hauling out the bank's office supplies and furniture.

Inside, the homeowners' attorney was locked out of the bank manager's office by deputies while the bank manger tried to figure out what to do.

Allen says the manager was visibly shaken, "Having two Sheriff's deputies sitting across your desk, and a lawyer standing behind them, demanding whatever assets are in the bank can be intimidating. But, so is having your home foreclosed on when it wasn't right."

After about an hour the bank finally cut a check to satisfy the debt, and no furniture was taken. A representative for Bank of America issued a statement saying they are sorry for the delay in issuing funds. They claim the original request went to an outside attorney who is no longer in business.

As for Allen, he calls this a symptom of a larger problem he sees often in the courts, where banks don't perform their due diligence on foreclosure cases. "As a foreclosure defense attorney this is sweet justice."

Click here to see video

Article courtesy of Wink News 

Stingy Megabanks Swimming in Cash and Loaning Less Than Ever

After receiving billions in TARP money from YOU, these crooked megabanks now have enough "F**k You Money" to show Americans how they really feel. If Congress would have bailed out the public, the bankers would not have needed the bailout. And taxpayers would have been the ones telling the banks, F**K U!

Wake Up America! You are being SCREWED!!

If the megabanks are so big on lending, why do their loan books keep shrinking?

The biggest U.S. banks tell us they have spent the past quarter writing loans, renewing credit lines and generally being upstanding economic citizens. Bank of America (BAC) says it provided consumers and businesses with $144 billion in credit in the first quarter, Wells Fargo (WFC) ponied up $151 billion and JPMorgan Chase (JPM), swinging for the PR fences, claims to have lent out an improbable-looking $450 billion.

Yet loan balances actually shrank from a year ago at all three banks in the first quarter, just as they did at their old pal Citi (C). This at a time when the too-big-to-fail four are being drenched with new deposits (see chart).

All told, average loans outstanding at  the fearsome four dropped 7% from a year earlier – a decline of $210 billion -- even as deposits rose 5%.

If this is what the bailed-out captains of the financial sector call supporting the recovery, no wonder the economy is going nowhere fast.

The banks, of course, protest that there are good reasons that their loan balances are dropping even as they wrap themselves in the flag of credit extension.

Good customers aren't exactly banging down the door demanding loans, they say, and won't till the recovery really gets rolling. And making loans for the sake of it doesn't pay off, as we may have learned during the financial meltdown.

"We got to where we are today by making good loans and making sound credit decisions," Wells Fargo's chief financial officer, Tim Sloan, said in an interview Wednesday.

And yes, even with all that shrinkage there are pockets of loan growth at the banks. JPMorgan Chase says loans to midsize companies rose every month last year, and Wells points to strength in auto dealer and commercial lending, along with the oft-questioned commercial real estate sector. 

"We love that business," says Sloan.

But mostly, loans are shrinking. That's partly because banks must put the worst mistakes of the bubble era in the rearview mirror, by taking losses on bad loans and letting other low-quality portfolios run off. Both those moves lead to lower loans outstanding.

All four banks are taking their lumps on that front. BofA is running off loans from the beyond-lax Angelo Mozilo era at Countrywide, JPMorgan is dealing with the sales-at-any-cost (see a shining example, below right) mindset of Kerry Killinger & Co. at Washington Mutual, and Wells Fargo is trying to rid itself of the worst Pick-a-Pay dross it picked up in its acquisition of Wachovia. Citi, of course, has its own issues.

Still, it's clear the banks are not lending quite as freely as their press release claims would have you believe. And the declines are all the more striking because they come when the banks, like their perk-addicted CEOs, are swimming in cash.

Average deposits at the four biggest banks rose by $154 billion over the past year, with Bank of America breaking $1 trillion in deposits for the first time and JPMorgan falling just $4 billion short of that mark.

As a result, all the big banks now have at least $1.06 in deposits for every dollar in loans outstanding. At this time a year ago, only JPMorgan was above $1 in deposits for each dollar in loans.

There is something to be said for banks having a lot of cash on hand, of course. As everyone but Dick Fuld learned from the crisis, running out of money makes it hard to persuade others of your firm's franchise value. And of course it is hard to grow a business without reaching out to new users.

"We are glad to have a highly liquid balance sheet," says Sloan. "Deposit growth gives us a chance to bring in new customers and cross-sell our products."

Given the banks' penchant for cooking up rosy-looking credit creation numbers at a time when their loan books are actually shrinking, maybe those products should come with a grain of salt.

Article by Colin Bar, CNN Fortune

Bofa CEO: Owners Shouldn't Look At Home As An Asset

The CEO of Bank of America, one of the banks culpable for the housing bust, now tells Americans that their homes are not worthy of being considered an asset, but rather a "...great place to live."

Wake Up America!! 

You CAN do something about this mess you're in if you will only take hold of your rights and exercise them. Vote out the villainous traitors who allow these bankers free reign to destroy our economy!

  

Homeowners may need to look elsewhere for long-term investment returns as housing prices in some areas may not rebound long-term, Bank of America Corp Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan said on Tuesday.

Moynihan, CEO of the largest U.S. bank, said at a state attorneys general summit that low population growth in some regions of the country indicated that prices might not rise in the wake of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

"It's sobering to think, but some people shouldn't be thinking of (their home) as an asset," Moynihan said at the 2011 National Association of Attorneys General conference. "They should be thinking of it as a great place to live."

Moynihan said the long-term average annual rise in post-war U.S. home prices of 4 percent owed much to the explosion in domestic population and, in more recent times, the relaxation of credit standards across the mortgage industry.

"The reality is that the population is not expected to grow the way it did post World War I and World War II," he said.

Moynihan noted an Ohio customers' complaint that his 100-year-old home was valued at $50,000. The home, Moynihan said, would be valued as "some multiples of that figure" if it were located elsewhere, but stagnant population levels in the state are driving demand and home prices lower.

The conference included many of the state attorneys general currently engaged in negotiations with BofA and other lenders about a broad settlement to allegations that the industry cut corners on foreclosures.

Moynihan said during his prepared remarks that he had spoken with the attorneys general about industry issues, but declined to comment further about the discussions.

Article by Joe Rauch, CNN

The REAL Reason Ben Bernanke Leaves a Paperweight on the “Print” Button When His Finger Gets Tired

We’ve been over the numerous BS excuses that US Dollar destroyer extraordinaire Ben Bernanke has made for QE enough times that today I’d rather simply focus on the REAL reason he continues to funnel TRILLIONS of Dollars into the Wall Street Banks.

I’ve written this analysis before. But given the enormity of what it entails, it’s worth repeating. The following paragraphs are the REAL reason Bernanke does what he does no matter what any other media outlet, book, investment expert, or guru tell you.

Bernanke is printing money and funneling it into the Wall Street banks for one reason and one reason only. That reason is: DERIVATIVES.

According to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities for the Second Quarter 2010 (most recent), the notional value of derivatives held by U.S. commercial banks is around $223.4 TRILLION.

Five banks account for 95% of this. Can you guess which five?

 

Looks a lot like a list of the banks that Ben Bernanke has focused on bailing out/ backstopping/ funneling cash since the Financial Crisis began doesn’t it? When you consider the insane level of risk exposure here, you can see why the TRILLIONS he’s funneled into these institutions has failed to bring them even to pre-Lehman bankruptcy levels.

Ben Bernanke is a stooge and a fraud, but he is at least partially honest in his explanations of why he wants to keep printing money. The reason is to try to keep interest rates low. Granted he’s failing miserably at this, but at least he understands the goal.

Of course, Bernanke tells the public and Congress that the reason we need low interest rates is to support housing prices. He doesn’t mention that $188 TRILLION of the $223 TRILLION in notional value of derivatives sitting on the Big Banks’ balance sheets is related to interest rates.

Yes, $188 TRILLION. That’s thirteen times the US’s entire GDP and nearly four times WORLD GDP.

Now, of course, not ALL of this money is “at risk,” since the same derivatives can be traded/ spread out dozens of ways by different banks as a means of dispersing risk.

However, given the amount of money at stake, if even 4% of this money is “at risk” and 10% of that 4% goes wrong, you’ve wiped out ALL of the equity at the top five banks.

Put another way, Bank of America, JP Morgan, Goldman, and Citibank would CEASE to exist.

If you think that I’m making this up or that Bernanke doesn’t know about this, consider that his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, knew as early as 1999 that the derivative market, if forced into the open and through a public clearing house would “implode” the market. This is DOCUMENTED. And you better believe Greenspan told Bernanke this.

In this light all of Bernanke’s monetary policies and efforts are focused on doing one thing and one thing only: trying to shore up the overleveraged, derivative-riddled balance sheets of the Too Big to Fails.

The fact that the bank executives taking this money and using it to pay themselves and their employees record bonuses only confirms that these folks have NO interest in taking care of shareholders or their businesses. They’re just going to take the money and run for as long as this scheme works.

I don’t know when this will come unraveled. But it WILL. At some point the $600+ TRILLION behemoth that is the derivatives market will implode again. When it does, no amount of money printing will save the Too Bloated To Exist banks’ balance sheets.

At that point, it’s game over for Wall Street and the Fed.

Article by Graham Summers, Phoenix Capital Research