Do you think the $5 monthly charge Bank of America announced for its debit card customers is all about squeezing the consumer? Think again. What we are really witnessing are the death throes of an industry – the Too Big To Fail Banks. These are the banks that, at the height of the housing bubble, acted like they were hedge funds. They expected to earn 20% a year on their equity, and they rewarded their top executives accordingly, with bonuses in excess of $10 million for the CEO. Now all sorts of forces are conspiring to drag these banks into the boring, and decidedly non-lucrative status of utilities, earning maybe 5% a year on their equity, with their income capped by government decree. The bank executives don’t like this one bit. They see themselves being sucked down into the quicksand of $100,000 annual bonuses, and they are fighting back with everything they’ve got, even if it means making their cash-strapped customers pay ridiculous fees for services that used to be free.