Lemon Thrower wrote:here is what is going on.
the beloved Dodd Frank law had something called the Durbin amendment in it. It basically caps the fees that banks can charge merchants for debit card transactions. a little history is needed.
in the late 60s and early 70s, banks created credit cards and then spun these off into Visa and MasterCard. merchants pay fees to accept these, and a good portion goes to Visa and Mastercard.
Next the banks invented a new system - the debit card. it has completely different plumbing and is basically owned by the banks, not visa or MC. that is why the banks had pushed debit over credit.
debit used to be profitable for banks becuase of the fees charged to merchants who accepted it. those profits subsidized free checking,etc. congress changed the rules, the merchants benefit, and you lose.
everyone is going to start charging in some way for debit. this is not limited to bank of america, they just might have been first.
as for their website, i'm not sure why they are having problems. their stock has plummeted and their are rumors about their solvency. personally, i would not bank with them. 99% chance you are ok even if they fail, but you could end up with a lot of hassles and even if they were financially in great condition their website issues would cause me to move my accounts.
if they do fail it will get real interesting because they are commonly considered too big to fail. they are huge. they have 10% + of U.S. deposits. what would make the most sense would be to break them up but that is very hard to do.
I dont think that number is nearly that high. Its well known the FDIC can only cover like 25% of what it insures. With all the banks that fail every day I think that number is even less than that! BOA has always been a "bad" bank. As soon as they started offering credit cards to illegal aliens I knew they were hurting. The average person would be protected but I don't think all the other banks are going to be able to handle all the bad debt BOA has.