Nice Bank You Have Here….
11th October 2011
…a shame if anything should happen to it! The Democrats took gangster government to a new level today with attacks on Bank of America by Dick Durbin and President Obama. The attacks arise out of the Durbin Amendment to Dodd-Frank, which, as we wrote here, directed the Fed to fix the fees which banks can charge for debit card transactions. The rate set by the Fed is inadequate and will take something like $14 billion out of the pockets of major banks. So a number of banks, including Bank of America, have announced that they will replace the lost revenue by charging a monthly fee for debit cards; in BoA’s case, $5. Even though this was entirely predictable (and was in fact predicted), it has enraged the Democrats.
It is unprecedented, as far as I can recall, for a government official like Durbin to urge customers not to do business with a particular company because he doesn’t like that company’s pricing policies. If another bank offers customers debit cards for $3 and there are no compensating advantages at BoA, it would be reasonable for a customer to shift its business elsewhere. But businesses are entitled to price their products and services however they choose. It is up to consumers to decide which company’s offer they want to accept, if any. The Democrats are such inveterate bullies that they refuse to acknowledge this simple proposition.
Obama’s ignorance of economics is impressive in its comprehensiveness. We need a Consumer Finance Protection Bureau to “prevent this kind of stuff from happening.” What kind of stuff? Banks charging money for their services, like everyone else does? Banks “don’t have some inherent right just to get a certain amount of profit.” Of course not. It is only government that is entitled to your money, regardless of how well or poorly government serves you. But banks certainly do have an inherent right to charge prices that are set by them, not by a government agency, as long as those prices are not collusive.
2012 can’t come soon enough.
October 11th, 2011 at 08:01
Democrats seem to believe that the only rights that exist are the ones that they bestow themselves on the deserving Democratic voters.
October 11th, 2011 at 10:21
But what if Mr. Obama has a perfect understanding of economics? Could that be a possibility?
I can’t imagine someone PLANNING a worse strategy for a free market economy much less stumbling into the worst POSSIBLE economic policies and actions.
I’m afraid Limbaugh is right.
October 11th, 2011 at 10:49
Obama has managed to surround himself with the most astonishingly inept group of advisers and administrators in modern times. I thought Carter’s “Georgia Mafia” would hold the record for a long time, but Obama blew by them at a record pace.