Marcus ~ Great article. Perhaps in a few years we can elect some politicians who will bring some stability to our economy. Until then all this government-driven uncertainty and change is going to continue to leave our economy to be rebuilt on an unstable and unpredictable foundation.

Face it, if banks had not gotten greedy with(and addicted to)these fees and had not kept ticking up the overdraft fee (and kept it reasonable, around $15 per incident), this would be much less of a consumer issue.

We just finished a round of workshops with financial institutions across the country and everyone in attendance is thinking about this issue. There is a lot of concern about vastly reduce NSF and debit interchange fees.

At the end of the day, if fee income from NSF and Debit interchange are substantially reduced, firms are going to need to reasses their retail strategy as a whole, not just free checking.

Everyone has been fishing with “wide nets” with free checking for the past several years. Some firms may decide that the mass market has become less attractive and they could narrow their focus with more exclusionary pricing on checking.

As a part of this strategic reassessment, firms are going to really have a handle on their variable cost structure to understand when and if they begin saving “real” operating cost dollars by serving a lot fewer checking customers. Part of those cost savings are employee costs and those discussions can be difficult for management teams.