Just a note for those who use Debit cards.

[EaTCarbS]

Could be, or the retailers raise the cost of goods to compensate for the charges from the Chase.

Stephen

This sounds like the more likely outcome. In the end, all their BS just hurts the common citizen.

[Duane]

I wonder how many people are going to put up with the bank limiting their debit card usage? I can see the other banks standing pat and watching Chase's customers come to them in droves.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I wonder how many people are going to put up with the bank limiting their debit card usage? I can see the other banks standing pat and watching Chase's customers come to them in droves.

See, this is the part that Barney Frank, Bernanke, little Timmy and the rest don't understand: LET the big banks jack rates up to crazy levels. More small banks will offer drastically reduced rates and customers will move to the better competitor. Now, if the complaint is that the big banks are locking out the charge technology from being used by anyone that won't set the same prices they demand, then that's pretty clear-cut collusion and price-fixing.

There's an insidious side to all this that distorts how the whole system works. That is, when the government can be relied upon to step in and slap down the people who deviate from the "normal" flow of business, companies tend to start to depend on that, which artificially inflates or deflates that market. If the government would have stayed out of things from the beginning, the market itself would have corrected the abnormal overcharges by competition undercutting them and taking market share. But people are afraid to make those investments when the government shows a propensity to step in and fuck things up for everyone else. I'm probably not explaining it very well but basically, government-knows-best intervention scares creative adaptation out of the markets -- so you might not see the big negatives anymore but you also don't see the huge, risk-taking successes, either.

[coglistings]

I wonder how many people are going to put up with the bank limiting their debit card usage? I can see the other banks standing pat and watching Chase's customers come to them in droves.

agree