The Booger Rule of Antitrust in the Debit Card Fight « naked capitalism

Although we were big fans of the HuffPo piece yesterday on the DC war over debit card regulation, Adam Levitin was a bit less happy since the article focused on the politics and was thin on why the card fees were burdensome to merchants.

Although a few readers tried arguing the bank position and did not get a terribly enthusiastic reception, Levitin explains the real problem: the actions of the Visa/MasterCard duopoly are pretty clear antitrust violations, but as he pointed out via e-mail, the US pretty much does not do antitrust any more. The Chicago school of economics indoctrination of judges via an orchestrated “law and economics” movement (see ECONNED for an overview) has resulted in judges not seeing competitive problems anywhere. The Department of Justice has lost a slew of recent antitrust cases at the Supreme Court, so they’ve lost the appetite to pursue them.

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