Bank of America has dropped the first shoe with modest debit card user fees. So now, according to the Dick Durbin School of Macroeconomics, retail merchants will now begin to announce their off-setting and modest product and service price reductions, giving back their legislated windfall to the consumers, as promised.
OMG-That's right! There's a recession going on! Merchants need those savings to "create jobs" (Republican code phrase for "more profits with less taxes"). It begins to look like the Durbin School was really nothing more than a crossover from the Republican School of Voodoo Economics. Being from Illinois, that's not a pretty image to think of Dick Durbin as a well-disguised cross dresser. That's almost as strange as the Little Guys putting on cheap suits and running cover for the Big Banks on this same issue.
What's really going to trip our triggers in the coming months is when the consumer begins to wonder aloud why all these smart people couldn't come up with a better solution, and in fact didn't even try.
Michael Dillon
South Division Credit Union
Evergreen Park, Ill.
