American bank-customer rules like the Wild West

I just stumbled upon a status from a Facebook friend complaining over the service from Bank of America to a degree that he left the bank and encourage others to follow suit. Some of his friends commented and all comments agreed with him.

That made me add this comment, which has been brewing inside me for as long as I've lived in the US:

I just can't believe how weak the competition is in the US bank sector & how weak the consumers are!?!? How can the banks demand as high interest rates over here?!?? It's a mystery to me. The interests rates over here would be illegal in Denmark, and somehow our banks (in DK) are still doing quite well (and so are their stock holders) with decent profits even though Danish banks usually demand 8-12% interest rate on your credit card and 7-8% on home loans (the expensive 2nd mortgage). The institution that loans you the max 80% value of your home typically takes 5% interest rate for a fixed loan or lower if you're willing to renew your loan and accept a floating interest rate - for good or bad - 1 a year or every 3 years. Student loans cost the student 1% a year while they are studying and until 1 year after they graduate. Then it's time to pay back, and that at a rate of 3-5% I wish the Americans would have the same rules!

Checking Bank of America's website, I can't even find the rates they take for credit cards and student loans, not even under Frequently Asked Questions! But they make it very easy to open an account, of course. Not pretty.

Speaking of usury, just saw an ad for a company called peachtree, which looks like something equivalent to lendingtree/moneytree or whatever they're all called. All these pay day loan companies shocked a Danish friend and journalist of mine so much when she visited me here in the US that she took a picture of one of these companies. These kinds of companies are not legal in Denmark and haven't been for decades because they're considered to be taking advantage of desperate people in need.

Hilarious! Bank of America Chairman, Charles Holiday, just said on C SPAN that US banks shouldn't be restricted in size because then they would be weaker compared to their European competitors! As if any European bank is allowed to be as big as, say Bank of America. Has he 'forgotten' that it is EU that keep suing Microsoft for quenching free competition?!