Banditry

Done right there in the open:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. judge ruled on Wednesday that the Federal Reserve ignored the intent of Congress regarding a controversial cap on debit card “swipe fees” that are part of a dispute between banks and retailers.

The 2010 Dodd-Frank law called for the Fed to cap such fees, which banks charge to retailers when their customers use debit cards to make purchases.

Judge Richard Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia sided with retailers, who argued the Fed’s 21 cent cap was higher than Congress intended.

“The Board has clearly disregarded Congress’s statutory intent by inappropriately inflating all debit card transaction fees by billions of dollars and failing to provide merchants with multiple unaffiliated networks for each debit card transaction,” Leon wrote in his ruling.

...“From the very beginning, retailers and restaurants knew the Federal Reserve Board of Governors had grossly misapplied the swipe fee law,” Mallory Duncan, general counsel at the National Retail Federation, said in a statement after the ruling.

“They failed to heed Congress’ call to set fee standards that were ‘reasonable’ and ‘proportional’ to the actual cost of a transaction,” Duncan said.