As Big Banks Raise Fees, You Have Options

By RON LIEBER
NYT

So now we know what the big banks’ New Year’s resolution was: Keep the profits flowing from basic checking accounts.

Earlier this month, Bank of America announced its intent to test a number of different monthly fees for customers in some states, depending on the balance in their accounts or other relationships with the institution.

Right before the new year, meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase informed customers that under certain circumstances it would add monthly fees to many of the accounts it inherited from the now-deceased Washington Mutual.

This must feel awfully good for the veteran branch banking executives at Chase who looked stingy by comparison when WaMu ran ads all over the United States in the 1990s and 2000s telling consumers that free checking was a basic human right.

(More here.)