One of the big pushes for "conservatives" is tort reform, but it seems they are only concerned with individuals suing large corporations and winning seven figure judgments (millions). Have you noticed these same critics rarely call for tort reform of one corporation against another? Or multiple corporations judgments won by multiple corporations? On the order of ten figures (billions)?
This is the judgment that was made against Visa, MasterCard, and several banks in favor of many merchants. The judgment: 7.25 billion dollars! See "Visa, MasterCard, banks in $7.25 billion retails settlement", Reuters via Yahoo! Finance, 2012-07-13. Where is the cry for tort reform in this case? But if that is not enough, Target and Wal-Mart have chimed in that the judgment is too lenient! It is not changing a "broken" system. See "Wal-Mart opposes proposed settlement on credit card fees", Rueters via Yahoo! Finance, 2012-07-27.
I haven't worked out the exact numbers, but if a credit card company charges merchants two percent on card transactions, pays the merchants within a week, and collects from the cardholder within a month, it is charging about 12% interest or better. Considering that almost all the credit card processing is done by computer rather than an army of clerks transcribing charge slips, the processing costs per transaction are fractions of a cent. Oh, and another place all the jobs have gone. What a money machine!
