Nothing is going on with bitcoin per se, what you are witnessing is first hand greed and what happens when a group of people don't agree.
Greed does not cause excessive transaction fees.
The interesting fact of transaction fees is that the people who receive them (the miners) have no control over their amount.
Users (you and I) have demanded fast confirmation times, so the wallet developers have responded, with large suggested transaction fees, based on transaction fees of other unconfirmed transactions.