First, terms on credit cards got harsher. Now some people are seeing higher fees on their checking accounts. Citibank customers with Access or EZ checking accounts will now be charged a $7.50 monthly fee unless they maintain a $1,500 balance. Previously, the monthly fee was waived if customers set up direct deposit for paychecks or two automatic bill payments.

The head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said yesterday that she’s “very worried” that the nation’s biggest banks aren’t lending enough and warned the economy could take another turn for the worse without increased access to credit. FDIC Chairman Sheila C. Bair said the FDIC’s upcoming quarterly report would show that “not many large institutions are doing a very good job of lending.“ Instead, she said, some are taking advantage of near-zero interest rates by borrowing dollars cheaply to buy higher-yielding assets like stocks or commodities—a move known as the “carry trade.“

Crooks set sights on bank ATMs Stop and look before inserting your card into an ATM machine. Crooks have been tampering with automated teller machines around the world—and in Virginia, striking last summer in Hampton Roads and leaving behind 100 victims including those from Richmond and Chesterfield County. The victims were robbed of about $500,000, according to the Secret Service in Richmond. An investigation is ongoing.

European Union leaders will call on the world’s leading economies to threaten sanctions against banks that pay excessive bonuses to executives and traders.

The banking industry is under attack these days and unjustly so. Traditional banking has long been the backbone of communities all over this country and the driver of economic growth. Since the beginning of the modern banking era—which I define as dating back to the creation of the FDIC in 1933—banks have been through a roller coaster of regulatory cycles.

The Federal Reserve said yesterday that most banks expect their lending to remain tight through the second half of next year, with the exception of mortgage standards, which already are loosening a bit. The Fed’s latest survey of loan officers found that about 20 percent of U.S. banks tightened their lending standards on prime home mortgages in the April-June quarter, down from around 50 percent in the previous quarter and a peak of about 75 percent a year ago.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., long considered one of the strongest banks amid the credit crisis and ongoing recession, is expected to post a hefty second-quarter profit today.

It could be time to kiss fixed-rate credit cards goodbye. Two of the biggest credit-card issuers in the nation—Bank of America and Chase—say they’re switching some fixed-rate cards to variable rates to manage costs in light of the sweeping new reforms to the credit-card industry. The interest on variable-rate cards is tied to the rise and fall of the prime rate. The current prime rate is around 3.25 percent.

Music lovers weren’t the only ones drawn to the King of Pop. Wooed by his global fame and earning power, a bevy of financial firms ponied up tens of millions to finance the singer’s luxe lifestyle and kick-start his troubled career.

The other day the Obama administration said it was trying to find ways to control wages and salaries in the banking sector. As one news report summarizes, “The administration is seeking ways to make employee compensation mesh with performance, something that it believes hasn’t been happening. ‘We had a period where compensation practices just became completely unmoored from reality,‘ . . . Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said in an interview with the Associated Press.“

What will the tests do: Help the government decide which banks are healthy, which need to raise more money, and which are in danger of failing.
  Which banks? JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, MetLife Inc., PNC Financial Services Group Inc., U.S. Bancorp, Bank of New York Mellon Corp., GMAC LLC, SunTrust Banks Inc., State Street Corp., Capital One Financial Corp., BB&T Corp., Regions Financial Corp., American Express Co., Fifth Third Bancorp, and KeyCorp.

The government’s stress tests are supposed to project how the nation’s 19 largest financial firms would survive a deeper recession. How concerned should bank shareholders and customers be about the results of the tests? We talked with Mark Tenhundfeld, a senior vice president at American Bankers Association, a trade organization.

At least three of the 19 largest U.S. banks have passed government stress tests of their financial strength.

Anxiety is growing again over the health of the nation’s largest banks, and with Congress hesitant to commit more money, the Obama administration is exploring ways to strengthen them in the face of the ongoing recession. Results of the federal government’s “stress tests” on big banks are due May 4, and Wall Street is increasingly worried that they will find some banks in worse shape than expected.

Wall Street got the news it wanted on the economy’s biggest problems — banks and housing — and responded with a rally that hurtled the Dow Jones industrials up nearly 500 points.