Tort reform: for whom?

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!

Fight big banks! Use cash!

Banks claim they need to increase the swipe fee on debit cards to maintain their profits.  Currently many merchants pay a minimum of about 25 cents each time a customer used a debit card.  Many banks want to raise this to over 40 cents.

I talked to one merchant recently, and he said that he also gets charged two percent of each debit card sale.  Gosh, what a sweet deal for the banks.  In two days time, they have taken the money out of the customer's account and put the money in the merchant's account; all done electronically without human intervention.

If they are charging two percent on other people's money for two days, that means they are earning about 180 percent per year!  And they begrudge paying their own customers one percent on savings!

I still use my debit card and credit card for online transactions, but as often as I can I pay cash for bricks and mortar purchases.  It means that I have to visit my bank or one of its ATMs more frequently, but I am helping the local economy my keeping more money in the local merchant's pockets.  Maybe one of these days I may return to writing checks for purchase larger than the cash I want to carry.