Financial “Reform:” the End of Free Checking (Congress Wants Check Kiting)

When most Americans think of financial reform, they envision some sort of abstract change in rules to cut the profits of cigar-smoking investment bankers jetting across the globe in private airplanes, yet the reality of the recent Frank-Dodd Act hits much closer to home. In response to Section 1075 of the legislation, introduced by Sen. Dick Durbin, the largest US banks, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Chase, have ended their free checking programs.

Section 1075 allows the Board of the Federal Reserve to establish “reasonable” limits to the interchange fees charged by banks to merchants when consumers use debit cards as a method of payment. Moreover, it allows the Federal government to assemble data on every debit card transaction without providing any explanation of how that information would be used or for what reasons it would be collected. But in setting limits on the amount of those fees that banks charge, the profitability of debit cards plummets for banks...

Given the new credit and debit situations, it's only a matter of time before more people start writing checks for which they cannot afford hoping to get money quickly.

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I went to almost exclusive credit card usage and got almost 200,000 miles on my Alaska Airlines credit card. We decided it wasn’t worth it. Now we pull a certain amount of cash out every pay period and use that. We just like not being tracked.

Also, as we go more and more Galt, we purchase more and more of our non-food items off Craigslist and garage sales - which only take cash. When I get money out, I do it while using the debit card to purchase small amounts of groceries.

I do still use my Costco American Express card though. It quite literally PAYS you to use it, and I’ve paid it in full every singly month since I got it a couple years ago.

But the Federal government got draconian the last couple of decades. I lost all hope of turning it around before the Lord’s return during Clinton’s second term and considered Bush’s election a mere staving off the inevitable for a few years. Heck, I was saying in the early 1990’s that I feel like a jew in EARLY Nazi Germany.

Yeah, I violated Godwin’s law before it was a law. :)

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