MPC Hill Blast: Big Bank CEOs Get Richer While Grocery, Gas, Electric Prices Go Up
As summer begins, Americans across the country are struggling with rising grocery prices, gas well above $4 per gallon and electric costs at all-time highs.
Big bank CEOs, however, aren’t exactly feeling that pain.
In fact, the American Banker just reported that “Seven of the largest banks in the nation — JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citi, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Capital One Financial — significantly increased their CEOs' pay packages for 2025.”
Those increases ranged from 10.3% to 31.2% over their paychecks from 2024. All seven CEOs received more than $40 million pay packages. Some of them received much more. As reported by the NY Times:
- JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon made a “$770 Million Windfall” in 2025.
- Capital One CEO Richard Fairbank made more than $300 million.
- Citi CEO Jane Fraser made more than $100 million.
How are these big bank CEOs’ wallets getting so stuffed? Partly because they are sticking American businesses and consumers left and right with high fees.
Just look at credit card and debit card fees.
U.S. merchants are charged a total of $198 billion in credit and debit card transaction fees per year. And U.S. consumers are charged $191 billion in interest and other cardholder fees, according to the 2025 CFPB report on The Consumer Credit Card Market (see Page 5).
That’s nearly $400 billion in fees collected per year on credit and debit cards. What are those fees paying for?
Well, about one-tenth of them pay for rewards programs. According to Page 141 of the CFPB report, banks paid $47.5 billion in credit card rewards in 2024.
And far less pays for card fraud. According to Page 118 of the CFPB report, 2023 U.S. card fraud losses totaled $14.3 billion, and most of that gets charged back by banks onto merchants and consumers.
So why are big banks fighting so hard to charge massive card fees on U.S. merchants and consumers without competition or regulation — even when gas, grocery and electric costs are soaring?
Maybe it’s time to ask their CEOs.
COMPETITION IS BETTER FOR EVERYONE
IT'S TIME TO PASS THE CREDIT CARD COMPETITION ACT