And the Banks Lose One
The banks surprisingly lost for once. NY Times: The Senate refused Wednesday to delay new rules that would sharply cut the fees that banks can charge retailers to process debit card transactions. he debit card rules were a major part of the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law passed last year. The Senate vote was one of the strongest challenges so far to the new law. Although 54 senators voted in favor of the delay, the measure failed to garner the 60 votes that were required for it to pass under Senate rules. Forty-five senators voted against the measure, which was sponsored by Senator Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat who is facing a tough re-election battle next year, and Senator Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican. Even with the defeat, the vote showed the results of a remarkable come-from-behind lobbying campaign by banks to recover from the anti-Wall Street drubbing they took during last year’s debate over financial regulation . The debit card measure, sponsored by Senator Richard J. Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, passed last year by a two-to-one ratio after little debate and no hearings. The Wednesday vote, which followed a vigorous floor debate, was a victory for retailers, who have complained that banks and the companies that control the largest debit card networks, Visa and MasterCard, have consistently raised the fees on debit card transactions even as the market has grown rapidly and technology costs have declined. Those fees topped $20 billion last year, according to industry reports. Tea Party pols and activists are actually against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which if had their support would have become much tougher on the financial world and in the end helped the very people that are being gutted by Big Business. I’d say it was strange and self destructive, but John Birch and Ayn Rand rules the right these days.
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on June 9, 2011. Filed under