Banks abandon "shock and awe tactics" in favor of slow strategies for bleeding your wallet

Remember the failed Bank of America $5 checking fee? The one that spurred Bank Transfer day? Consumer outrage forced many banks to back off their overt attempts to make more money off of your money but that hasn't stopped them from finding new, more subtle ways to nickel and dime the American consumer.

Banks can still earn a profit on most checking accounts. But they are under intense pressure to make up an estimated $12 billion a year of income that vanished with the passage of rules curbing lucrative overdraft charges and lowering debit card swipe fees.

You read that right. In addition to the tidy sum that they made off the money entrusted to them by hard-working Americans, banks had previously devised ways to make an additional profit that is about $2 billion shy of the United States' Gross Domestic Product.

The old "Bank of the Mattress" is starting to sound pretty good right about now...

Ed

Ed enjoys all forms of entertainment and has an unnatural love for quantitative methodology. He operates out of a basement in Northern Virginia (@edomaniac).

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