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<font face="Verdana" size=2>Bank Overdraft Fees Increase - by <a href=http://creditfederal.com>CreditFederal.com</a><br><br><font size="2"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Banks increase penalty overdraft fees. Now not only do you need to reduce bills, but also avoid going over your <a href="http://creditfederal.com/bank-checking-account.html">bank checking account</a> and credit card limit.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana;"><br style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Just when consumers are already facing higher costs on everything and are more likely to overdraw, banks are increasing the amount for penalty overdraft fees.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana;"><br style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Why? To offset <a href="http://creditfederal.com/bad-credit.html">bad credit</a> loan losses. Overdraft fees have become a source of profits to the tune of about $17.5 billion per year, according to the Center for Responsible Lending.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana;"><br style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Checking account customers are easy sources for fees because banks can deduct fee money from a customer's next deposit.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana;"><br style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Earlier this year, the Federal Reserve proposed a rule that bars financial institutions from charging a fee for paying an overdraft, unless customers have had the chance to opt out of this payment.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana;"><br style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">More bad news: Consumer confidence fell sharply in June, sinking to its lowest level in more than 16 years, according to a private industry group. Americans remain wary of the current state of the economy, as falling home prices and the rising cost of gasoline force many to make difficult spending choices.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana;"><br style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">The report Tuesday also said the group's reading of consumers' expectations hit an all-time low as home prices tumbled while gasoline and food prices rose. A separate index of home prices saw the largest drop since its inception in 2000.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana;"><br style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">The Conference Board's consumer confidence index fell to 50.4 this month, the lowest since February 1992. The index dropped from from 58.1 in May, a much steeper decline than economists expected. The consensus estimate of economists surveyed by Thomson/IFR was 56.5 for June.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana;"><br style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Inflation, political flux and job insecurity have created an "uncertainty more acute, perhaps, than any time since 9-11," said William Hummer, chief economist at Wayne Hummer Investments.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana;"></font><br><br>This article provided courtesy of <a href=http://creditfederal.com target=_new>www.CreditFederal.com</a>, a personal credit resource of good or bad credit credit cards and loans.</font>