Friday, December 23, 2011

This Week in Bank Failures

The United Kingdom is taking steps to eliminate surprise card payment surcharges tacked on by sellers. These can sometimes amount to more than $100 for a credit card payment.

Bank of America fell below $5 for half of a trading session this week. The low price put it in the “danger zone” in which many traders are prohibited from buying the stock on margin. That makes a stock harder to buy and can lead to further erosion in its price. The stock recovered the next day, in part because of reports of a legal settlement, which saw the bank’s mortgage lending unit pay less than $1 billion to settle charges of systemic discriminatory lending practices.