Blue Moon Agency

Canadian music festival takes huge step against Native appropriation

For various reasons, Bass Coast Festival is banning feathered war bonnets, or anything resembling them, onsite. Our security team will be enforcing this policy.

We understand why people are attracted to war bonnets. They have a magnificent aesthetic. But their spiritual, cultural and aesthetic significance cannot be separated.

America, we know you hate Congress, but this makes no sense

Americans don’t show their political anger through passion. They show it through apathy.

Only 7% of Americans have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in Congress according to a Gallup poll released last month. That’s the lowest it’s been since Gallup started asking in 1973 — meaning it might be the lowest it’s ever been.

Overdraft Fees at Banks Hit a High, Despite Curbs | WSJ

Squeezed by falling revenue on deposit accounts, banks are turning to a familiar source of income: overdraft fees.

Nearly four years after regulators tried to curb the fees, banks are lifting them to new heights. The median fee for withdrawing more from a checking account than a customer has on deposit increased to an estimated $30 in 2013—a record—up from $29 in 2012 and $26 in 2009, based on a survey of 2,890 banks and credit unions by Moebs Services Inc., an economic-research firm in Lake Bluff, Ill.

"Banks have a revenue gap that needs to be recouped," said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com, which tracks overdraft fees and other charges.

Banks’ fee revenue from checking, savings and other deposit accounts has been sliding since several regulations took effect. The Federal Reserve in 2010 stopped banks from automatically charging customers overdraft fees on debit-card and automated-teller-machine transactions. In addition, the Dodd-Frank financial-overhaul law included an amendment that went into effect in 2011 lowering a debit-card fee large financial institutions charge merchants.

The recent regulations “have forced banks to raise fees where they ordinarily would not have done so,” said Richard Hunt, chief executive of the Consumer Bankers Association, which represents retail banks with more than $1 billion in assets and is based in Washington.

At the same time, years of low rates on mortgages and other loans have eaten into the income banks collect from interest charges, an important driver of bank earnings.

To help make up for lost revenue, experts say banks are raising overdraft fees and pitching related services, hoping to increase the pool of customers who can incur such fees.