Naked among cannibals (Score 3, Informative)

A year or two ago I read a great book "Naked among cannibals", which was an inside story about the Australian banking system. With the reduction in interest rates and increase in competition from other lenders there was a very definite and deliberate move to replace interest margins with fee income. The bank that the author worked at 'pioneered' the range of loan fees in Australia - application fees, duplicate statement fees, break fees, .... Another trick was to offer deposit accounts with relatively high interest rates. After heavy advertising and signing up customers, the bank would move to a 'new' deposit product (ie just a name change) and then lower the interest rates paid on the old product. The author noted several times, that the reason the could get away with doing this and still make money is because we let them.