SCOTUS To Hear Bank Regulatory Suit

Coming down the pike:

The battle over the expanding federal preemption of state consumer credit laws has been raging in banking circles and federal courts for years. It is currently before the Supreme Court yet again, in the case of Cuomo v. Clearing House, L.L.C. It is also one of the points of contention among the members of the Congressional Oversight Panel on Regulatory Reform that prompted two of its five members to withhold their support from the Panel’s January 2009 Special Report on Regulatory Reform

We've been through this a few times in Wisconsin, and SCOTUS has usually acquiesced to the (national) Comptroller of the Currency's view--which is that nationally operating bank credit-card companies may "export" their domicile-State's usury laws to any other State in which they operate.

You may have noticed that a suspiciously large group of CC issuers operate from HQ locations in Delaware and North Dakota--States which are extremely loose on allowable interest rates.

Expect to hear the whine from the Banks about 'not being able to afford lending' in States with strict usury laws.

Of course, if they hadn't made sub-prime loans, they would have plenty of remaining capital...and profits.