24 arrested at Bank of America protest

Time will tell but I think the issue is that they ARE cutting where it won't hurt, namely low-quality banking customers who don't have high enough balances to have the accounts that aren't going to get the fee. So they will lose someone who keeps maybe a grand in their checking week to week, who used to overdraft once in awhile and get hit with a 30 dollar fee (recently given the automatic opt-out).

You have wealthier individuals who have great credit cards with great rewards who will just put everything on credit and transfer the balance if their accounts aren't exempt from the fee. Or the $5 doesn't phase them anyway, but I happen to think the former would be the more frequent case.

Wells Fargo has tried this in some markets, so clearly its on the table across the country in many big banks. BoA has a really strong ATM network, it has alot of people in its 'free checking' system (free taken with a grain of salt). Finally, the most painful point: most people might threaten to leave, but do they have the time/discipline/drive to follow through? Time will tell. Just my two cents, which is fee'd.

tl;dr - wasn't this protest about mortgages anyway?

There are plenty of community banks willing to take your business. Oh, but right, you don't like free markets (New Balance, Zipcar wouldn't exist without free markets either). So, you feel you need to stay with BofA? I don't get it. Only countries with free markets have freedom of speech which is what makes this a protest instead of a revolution. If the protest succeeds in moving customers from BofA to other banks, then it is a success.

BlackKat, you are so sensible. The protests are not about $5/month debit card fees, but the incumbent media continues to ignore the frustration of the 99%. You say it like it is.

They are losing an ability to make too much money.

Young people, educated and many unemployed, will continue to self-organize and take to
the streets. Soon, they will be joined by grandmothers who lost their savings in the financial
crisis that YES was propagated and nicely packaged by unregulated BANKS.

Yes, Reason is so devoid of reason for being at the forefront of things like
* Ending The War On Drugs
* Ending Eminent Domain Abuse
* Ending The Death Penalty (research Radley Balko and Corey Maye)
* Opposing Corporate Welfare
* Promoting Immigration Reform and Open Borders
* Opposing increasing occupational licensing restrictions
* Opposing Don't Ask Don't Tell

Sure, their economic backround won't gel with the Mother Jones crew, but then again I don't really see the problem with not being on the Bush & Obama train of economics these days considering how miraculously ineffective the two have been. The "consensus" on economic policy has gotten us to 14 trillion in debt and counting, so I will gladly accept opposing viewpoints.

Off topic, but I'm sure the City of Boston would love to lose the jobs and revenue from Bank of America moving out to a cheap suburb. That would do just wonders for an already struggling budget. These are the kind of rash, under-cooked ideas that lead our politicians to create all these messes. Yelling blithly about platitudes like "all banks are evil" is going to get you nowhere.

Financial firms are actually incredibly regulated - one of the only industries that truly has not had any significant deregulation like other industries (such as postage or airlines - which have had great results) besides maybe healthcare. It's incredibly easy to argue George Bush was the highest-regulating president since Lyndon Johnson and now Barack Obama if you actually know what he has done. It is the most amazing myth that people think he deregulated much of anything, or there is any significant difference between his policies and Obama's current policies. The last presidents that did any meaningful deregulation were democrats - Carter and Clinton, by the way.

Additionally, yelling about banks causing the crisis without acknowledging the impact of congress in promoting trillions subprime mortages through Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac (thank you again, Mr. Barney Frank) just sounds unintelligent - like a backwoods Republican who screams "they're stealing our jeorbs!"

If the religion of the right is god and sticking it's nose into our bedroom lives, the religion of the left is regulation and the belief that politicians are "experts" about what they legislate - sticking their noses too far into an impossibly dynamic economy. Every day new laws are made to shape how we can live our lives or MAKE a living. Whether it's throwing people in jail for selling bacon-wrapped hotdogs, requiring an expensive license to shampoo someone's hair, or banning fish pedicures because of the belief it is somehow dangerous. These are only three small examples among an increasingly uncountable amount of ways that regulation does more far harm than good. Sure they might be trivial, but that is the lesson of "a death by a thousand cuts"

Regulation is a blunt instrument. It can certainly be a force for good, but the tighter and more spread it gets the more loopholes and unintended consequences there inevitably are. Economies thrive on simplicity, not exceptions. Collusion and cronyism thrive on thousands of pages of rules that only high paid lawyers can decipher (and are also usually part of writing them to begin with - ie: there's a reason the health insurance industry is overwhelmingly pro Romney and Obama)

You can argue that banks are bad (I would argue they are certainly worth their faults as would I imagine most people) but they are also not all the same. The power of a free market is that other banks will be around to treat you better. The actions of the last two presidents to put the taxpayers on the hook for all the bad decisions of these companies has in the end led to more consolidation in banks, not less, and more difficulties for the industry to diversify.

In other words, its easy to make the argument that a lack of a strong, dynamic, and more open banking industry market is harming us. We have the "iron fist and knuckles" industry already, and it is indeed proving poisonous.

PS: Before you go cursing "free markets" perhaps you should thank them for your ZipCars, before they end up going the path of Taxi Cabs http://reason.com/blog/2011/07/07/reasontv-dc-taxi...

That is, if you can stand another mindless Reason.com article.

True but the protest had moved locations by that time to JFK/UMass area. I was disappointed as well but during the main part it seemed semi cohesive and with ok numbers.

Tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can’t explain that.

and while the 1500 people were protesting 6000 were at the Harpoon Brewery having a great time

This isn't true. I was there and can say with the utmost certainty that this was *not* the "usual suspects" for a demonstration in Boston. There were lots and lots of everybody there. At one point, I even had to stop and look around for a college-aged kid. Dismiss it if you'd like, and pat yourself on the back for being a-political (as a few commenters have done), but the truth is, this was a very diverse, very large crowd. These facts are not insignificant.