When the Democrats added the provision to Dodd-Frank that put price controls on the fees that banks could charge merchants for transactions, I thought, “This is just going to come back and bite consumers in the butt. They’ll have to start charging for debit cards.”
I figured it was an oversight or a mistake by the Democrats.
Now, after watching how the press has successfully spun this into another story about Evil Capitalists instead of Evil Democrats, I’m not so sure it was a mistake. Even Freepers are falling for it. “The Democrats bought us a free lunch, and if we don’t get the free lunch, it’s because of greedy banksters.” Yeah, right.
Not so fast there Mr Third Eye. This has more to do with Visa and Mastercard logo’d debit cards. Banks do have costs from that. Which go up all the time to cover losses from fraud. A bank issuing it’s own debit card would not have to increase anything.