If you have a Chase credit card, you have probably noticed the $10 per month service charge that has been added to your monthly credit card statement as recently as November of last year. If you are like thousands of other Americans, this monthly service charge has infuriated you.

However, the New York Office of the Attorney General has ordered Chase Bank to stop charging cardholders the monthly fee. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced on March 30, 2009 that this monthly charge had been added by Chase to over 184,000 credit accounts across the nation. The monthly service charge was imposed mostly on new accounts with a promotional APR.

Most of these monthly fees were added to customer accounts beginning in November 2008. There are more than 100 million Chase credit cards around the country and cardholders around the country were completely outraged by Chase’s actions but were told that there was nothing that could be done.

Luckily, Attorney General Cuomo took matters into his own hands. He said, “My office will not sit back and allow banks to promise one thing in its solicitations and agreements with consumers, and then when times get tough, change the deal, leaving consumers holding the bag. Truth-In-Lending laws prohibit this very conduct. I am glad that Chase has now reconsidered its ill-advised, illegal decision, and will now live up to the terms it originally offered and agreed to.”

Not only will this monthly service charge no longer be charged to thousands of accounts, but the money that was already charged to these consumers will be given back. Chase will refund approximately $4.4 million to deserving customers around the country.

No one expected JPMorgan Chase to post these profits. On January 15, 2009, the financial giant posted surprising quarterly profits. These profits came, despite of the massive the company took in “its investment banking business.” After the hit in the investment banking business, the company was forced to set a huge portion of money aside. This “chunk of cash” will be used in the event of loan losses.

JPMorgan Chase reported that its net income fell 76 percent during the fourth quarter of last year. Thus, its net income ended up at $702 million. That equals $0.07 per share. During 2007′s fourth quarter, the company ended up with $2.97 billion (or $0.86 per share).

You might look at those numbers and feel extremely bad for the New York City-based bank. Don’t. These statistics were far better than expected. Financial analysts were expecting the company to barely break even.

Why did they do better than just break even? Much has to do with its “one-time gain of $1.3 billion.” This gain was due largely to its purchase of Washington Mutual late last year. Without this purchase, the company said it would have been forced to report of a loss of $0.28 per share.

JPMorgan Chase’s revenue also fell. Analysts predicted that revenue would fall to $18.8 billion. However, it fell to $17.2 billion.

How did JPMorgan Chase’s investors take the news? Extremely well. In fact, many of its investors seemed to be “encouraged by the news.” Because of this, JPMorgan Chase’s share rose approximately 2% on Thursday morning.

The investors may be encouraged, but the company’s CEO and Chairman, Jamie Dimon, called the results, “very disappointing.

Dimon said the results were because of the failure of the company’s investment banking business. This segment of the company took a brutal hit after a “series of writedowns on its leveraged loan portfolio and mortgage-related investments” took place.

Considering the state of the economy right now, JPMorgan Chase needs to feel pretty good about the current state of affairs of its company. There are thousands of banks around the country that only wish they too could have posted such fourth quarter results.