A new grass root movement, Move Your Money, is encouraging consumers to strike back by moving money (and power) out of the pockets of the big banks and credit card issuers and put it into the hands of credit unions and smaller community banks.

For people already stuck with high-interest credit card debt, the new credit card rules unfortunately offer little relief. A new initiative, the American Debt Relief Challenge, seeks to change this and put a new face on credit card debt relief.

According to a recently released study by the credit rating agency Experian, affluent suburbans top the list of those most at risk for credit card fraud and identity theft.

Although credit card issuers are still under pressure from high defaults on credit card debt, the recently released numbers for January show early signs of improvement.

Even as there are early signs that consumer confidence in financial institutions is returning, there is one big exception: in a survey ranking almost 50 financial services companies in the U.S., consumers placed the nation’s largest credit card issuers at the bottom.