Some of you are anxiously awaiting election results. Some others are probably waiting for your deposited check to clear. Even though Congress two years ago passed a law known as Check 21 that gives banks faster access to the checks we write to others, it failed to shorten the length of time banks are allowed to hold the checks we deposit to our own accounts. Instead it required a study, and the regulators have been conducting it over their typical geological time cycle. Here's a blog entry by Gail Hillebrand of Consumers Union with more details. Here's a letter from CU, US PIRG and others urging the Fed to speed up the study and speed up the checkholds. Otherwise, banks will continue to pile on unfair bounced check fees as they game the system against consumers by imposing bounced check fees on deposited but "unavailable" funds.