SeniorJunior

To Heck With the Big Guys Someone close to me was one of those victims of Wells Fargo (Could have been B of A or J.P. Morgan Chase, any of the Big Guys... ) charged $35 each for several overdrafts on his debit card before he caught on what was happening. As a college student, $35 here and there amounts to a big deal. And of course I'm groused out about how the big banks are exploiting credit card holders, not lending like they should, soaking up public funds, overpaying their executives, lobbying against reasonable regulations, etc. So we decided to take our meager funds out of Wells Fargo and put them in a local credit union. And that was BEFORE Huffington Post came up with the "Move Your Money" campaign. But I really like how Huffington approaches this. Check it out here . Chances are, you will actually save money by moving it to a credit union or a locally owned bank. art credit

Wouldn't You Know It The Prez sets out to recover our (we the taxpayers') TARP money from the banks we saved. Then before the plans get finalized, we have this Reuters story: Banks, experts eye possible ways around Obama fee Dan Wilchins NEW YORK Thu Jan 14, 2010 6:20pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - No sooner does Washington propose a new tax than an army of experts tries to figure out ways to avoid it. That is already the case with U.S. President Barack Obama's proposed fee on banks, designed to ensure that Wall Street banks pay up to $117 billion to reimburse taxpayers for the financial bailout: Bankers, lawyers and consultants are already considering ways to avoid paying the fee. "This law could be a real boon for lawyers and consultants like me. There are tremendous opportunities for coming up with new mechanisms to avoid it," said Bert Ely, a bank consultant in