This is such a bizarre analogy I don’t even know what to say about it.
They gave several months notice that this would be happening, what more do you want? Do you think they should be prohibited from charging new fees to existing customers, forever?
Do you not understand the difference between revenue and income?
From that same page, net profit is positive across the board.
If I am understanding at all the credit loss allowance calculation on page 111, the negative net income numbers “…represents management’s estimate of probable losses inherent in the Corporation’s loan portfolio excluding those loans accounted for under the fair value option.” (bolding mine)
In other words, those income losses may or may not actually have occurred. Additionally, those are income losses on investments and not losses due to operating expenses.
Pretty obvious that I do have my revenue and income flip flopped. :o
To answer the previous question, I don’t want any more from them. I don’t want anything from BofA, in fact I do very little business with BofA and intend to keep it that way. I do not believe they should be prohibited to charging new fees for new services or increasing fees as operating costs increase. I am not subject to this fee in the account I do have that is under BofA control.
I do want the apologists to shut the hell up. The Durbin Amendment was added because the lawmakers agreed the large banks were gouging business on the transaction fees. Shifting the burden onto the account holder doesn’t change that. If you want to pretend this is some kind of anti-profit / anti business tactic believe what you want. In my opinion it is little different than than the government hiking the cigarette tax. The majority of the burden falls on those who can least afford it. As evidenced by this thread, those with significant investments or deposits with BofA are saying they will not be subject to the fee.
I’ll bow out now. This is just going to devolve into a debate centered on my understanding of a balance sheet, a debate I have no illusions of winning. Nor one that I think matters a wit in this. BofA is perfectly within their rights to assign this fee. Doesn’t mean anyone has to applaud them for it.
Probably not, since the debate is over income statements and not balance sheets. 
Bad analogy. The legislation came first.
I rest my case. :eek:
Honestly I don’t follow.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume the HBNS act cuts the app transaction fees Apple can charge by 50%.
(I know, not a perfect analogy, it is a product… but being software it is closer to a service than say groceries would be.)
Would everyone that owns an iphone be perfectly satisfied if a $5 a month service fee were introduced because of this? Perhaps you think so. I do not.
I thought you were bowing out. 
Haven’t I made it perfectly clear that I’m not too smart?
Anything to do with banking and investments right now is awfully emotional for people. More so than usual even. Stepping back and taking another look at it, I think I should be more pissed at the lawmakers for protecting one group and leaving the average Joe exposed. Just more of the same half thought out financial legislation that has dogged us for years.
It might be nice if the CEO of a company with 100+Billion dollars of annual revenue could refrain from whining like a 5 year old when his customers complain about his new fee structure.
If I was the boss, I would simply conclude the employee wants a raise. He’d either be worth it or not. I don’t give a damn what silly cover story he chooses to use. In the end, either he’s a service worth paying for or not. Same with banks and fees. People get so hung up on the details of what the fee is called or precisely the point at which it accrues.
How would you structure it? Is there some monumentally fairer way?
Isn’t it fun to demonise those we don’t like and pretend they have some sort of twisted moral code so we can get angry at the attributes we made up and pinned on them?
I’m not angry at him, I’m laughing at him. He’s a fucking clown.
“We have a right to make a profit”??? That’s shit a crappy one man operation says to the latest customer he managed to piss off.
Instead of getting incensed at your unhappy customers, maybe you should think about what you could be doing better. Maybe cut back on the number of foreclosures you initiate against homeowners who don’t have mortgages with you. Baby steps.
I think he is responding to the various people who seem to think that any business that ends a year with more than they started with has committed some heinous crime against mankind, and that he left off the “try”.
If you want to complain about this kind of entitled thinking, complain about the people who feel they have a “right” to free healthcare even if they can’t produce enough value to pay for insurance themselves.
Occasional mistakes like that, even though they get reported with glee on the Huffington Post, have fuck all to do with the actual profitability of the company. It’s not like they have some kind of organized plan to do that - it’s a huge organization, inevitably it will make some mistakes, and trying to assign any significance to those mistakes only shows that you care more about promoting your agenda than actually looking at the situation objectively.
BoA one of those banks that “was too big to fail”.
It survived because it held the country economically hostage for a gigantic 11 figure loan.
It ended up needing this loan because people like it’s cry baby of a CEO. Took huge brianlessly fucking stupid risks in the name of profit.
How many people did Bank of America put out of work? Now they want to cry because people don’t like their fees.
Meanwhile, how many Americans are still out of work thanks to BoA’s incompetence?
You asked about raises. Do you think someone who almost put the company out of business asking for a raise might be a bit outrageous?
They should be kissing our feet for saving their incompetent ass.
Excusing their mistakes as symptomatic of a huge organization simply underscores the need to strip the banks back to much smaller organizations.
Isn’t it fun to angelicize those we like and pretend they have some sort of perfect moral code so we can rejoice at the attributes we made up and pinned on them?
I never said they should be excused, merely that they’re inevitable and only significant to intentional mud-slingers like Cheesesteak. The fact that, out of 50 million foreclosed mortgages, Bank of America fucked up their prosecution of one or two of them is totally goddamned irrelevant unless you’re more concerned with scoring points than actually forming a reasonable opinion.
Please explain how the post you quoted implies Moynihan has a perfect moral code. While you’re at it, point out the rejoicing.
Sorry, you don’t get where I’m coming from at all. I accept that I have probably posted snippets rather than laying out any cohesive manifesto. I’m a lefty who works in a legal/corporate right wing world. I kid myself that I see both sides.
Demonisation gets no one anywhere. Companies are groups of people. The people who work in companies are generally about as evil and as grasping and as nice and as thoughtful and as charitable as most. The hilarious thing is that some people don’t see the obvious parallels between the sense of entitlement I percieve in wanting to have a debit card one can use but not pay for and the sense of entitlement some percieve in wanting to make a profit from offering a debit card service. It cuts both ways.
When a company does something that seems “entitled” the concentrated and high profile nature of their actions draws fire. After all, companies are concentrators of the will and investment of large groups of people. The effects are more obvious and impersonal.
When a bunch of disconnected people do something just as entitled the diffusion hides the similarity to what companies do.
Really, the parallel is to what Agent K said in MiB: “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it.”
Who would, in the aggregate, make the same rate or quite possibly a higher rate of mistakes. Occasionally shit happens. Focussing on that as if it provides an accurate broad picture is a fool’s game or a polemicist’s gambit.
It’s always amusing to hear the corporate apologists whine about a corp’s right to make a profit. Sorry, but the constitution doesn’t protect business models. Yet.
Admittedly Princhester is more reasonable.
Australia put the lid on bank fees years ago, so actually this sort of data does exist.
Clamp down on debit and consumers will make greater use of cash. Cash is actually a pretty costly transaction mechanism, most of it coming from banks. It’s about one half of one percent of GDP per year, which is huge. Cite: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/10/10/how-to-reduce-reliance-on-cash/
Other banks are not following BofA’s lead, and I doubt whether this will push them over the edge: Banks Surrender on Debit Card Fees — For Now – Mother Jones
It’s pretty clear that BofA blundered. Not for the first time: their takeover of Countrywide was an unforced errors.
I really think this is largely a strawman though. As has already been said, I think that the corporate detractors jump on loose language and use it to lampoon corporate apologists as if they (the apologists) are suggesting they have some sort of moral right (and/or hope to get a legal right) to a profit. I just don’t see that as what business people or corporations think or mean.
In more than 20 years of working with people up to and including CEO’s of international conglomerates I have not met a single person who thinks this is true. Indeed, while I have not discussed the topic in every case, in my estimation based on general discussion and inference, every single person I have ever met in the corporate world, without exception, would think that the idea they have a legal or moral right to a profit is dumber than a box full of hammers. Most of them spend their time trying to think what *they can do *to make a profit; the idea they are legally or morally owed one would not cross their minds.
The idea that business people think otherwise is caused by demonisation (the handmaiden of lack of familiarity) of people who are Not Like Us and therefore can be happily be assumed to have alien, weird and distasteful beliefs.
I think when corporate apologists say a corporation has a right to make a profit primarily what they mean is that the counter position (that making a profit is somehow inherently illegitimate) is erroneous.