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From the Washington Examiner:Related entry:
If we had a "Dim Bulb of the Year" award, we would give it to Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. How better to honor someone who so ostentatiously proposes a policy with obvious unintended consequences, then gets angry when they predictably come to pass?
During the debate over the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, when Democrats controlled Congress, Durbin insisted on including an amendment that had nothing to do with Dodd-Frank's stated aims of stable banks and consumer protections. The Durbin amendment granted regulators the authority to establish price controls on what banks could charge merchants that accepted their customers' debit cards as payment. The resulting regulations, which took effect Oct. 1, limit what banks can charge merchants to no more than 24 cents per debit card transaction.
Critics pointed out that banks, facing $6 billion annual losses from this change, would shift the costs of debit cards from merchants to bank customers. Sure enough, Bank of America and several of its largest competitors -- including Wells Fargo, PNC, HSBC, SunTrust, TDBank, and Chase -- will be imposing various new fees on their customers to make up for Durbin's folly.
But Bank of America drew Durbin's particular ire because its management directly blamed Durbin by name for the new $5 per month charge it is leveling at customers who make purchases with their debit cards. "Bank of America is trying to find new ways to pad their profits by sticking it to its customers," Durbin said in a petulant statement released this week. This might almost pass the laugh test, if not for the fact that every bank is adjusting to Durbin's dumb law in nearly the same way.
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Today came the latest stage of this ongoing saga. Sen. Durbin's calculations are correct, but what is his point? He accuses Wells Fargo of attempting to make a profit, "[i]nstead of making up costs." Is Wells Fargo supposed to charge for its services just enough to cover its expenses? What about its shareholders' interests?
ReplyDeleteBut what Sen. Durbin doesn't mention in his letter is that the lost profits from interchange fees that Wells Fargo is now looking for ways to make up for have not actually disappeared into thin air, nor are they being passed on to consumers. Far from it. The $7 billion or so in annual interchange fees that the Durbin Amendment is costing issuers, are now being collected by retailers and most of it – by big-box stores (e.g. Wal-Mart and Target). It is up to them alone to pass any portion of the windfall on to consumers. If you believe that this will happen, well, I have a news for you.
The bottom line is that we are now suffering through the entirely predictable side effects of the Durbin Amendment's passing, for which everyone who was paying attention warned when it was first proposed. Sen. Durbin should stop bullying businesses for acting in their shareholders’ best interests. http://blog.unibulmerchantservices.com/why-are-banks-charging-new-debit-card-fees