Genius (D) Credit-Card Reforms

Well, they're fixing the problems, right?

Previous to the current meddling by Congress, stores were technically not allowed to require a minimum purchase for credit cards. If you wanted to charge ten cents or ten dollars merchants were supposed to accept the charge. But the Durbin Amendment (Sen. Dick Durbin, D of Ill.) to the credit card “reform” bill passed by Congress will change all that by allowing stores to set a minimum charge amount of $10 before you are allowed to use your credit card to purchase something.

The dirty little secret here is that it's not really "the stores" which drove this (D) amendment; it was the Banks/Card processors. They insisted on retaining their fee-income from "the stores" and were not giving an inch on those fees, so "the stores" were screwed unless there was a change. This change simply allowed "the stores" to retain some semblance of margins, too.

Durbin is the new Senator from Banking to replace Dodd.

But as Gateway observes, there are implications. Read the rest of his post...