Swiped: Banks, Merchants And Why Washington Doesn’t Work For You
Interchange fees on credit cards are one of our largest expenses. This article details the little known effects on both small businesses such as ours as well as the costs to our customers. Even more interesting, this debate is a metaphor for the way business is done in D.C.
“The swipe fee debate, as mundane as it may appear, is emblematic of how Washington works today — and helps explain why Congress hasn’t passed an appropriations bill in years, can’t write an annual budget, is flirting with defaulting on the country’s debt and effectively gave up on job-creation efforts in the midst of a brutal economic downturn. There are, to be sure, a variety of reasons that Congress is zombified, but one of the least understood explanations is also one of the simplest: The city is too busy refereeing disputes between major corporate interest groups.”