This weekend, the lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal was about the Credit Card Fair Fee Act, legislation sponsored by John Conyers (D-MI) and Chris Cannon (R-UT) that would create a special administrative law judge panel to set credit card network interchange fees.
The Journal came out against the legislation, as a simple fee setting regime. Whether an ALJ panel is the best way to fix the interchange problem is certainly a fair issue for debate…once we all acknowledge that there is a serious problem and that a legislative fix might be in order.
I was pleased to see that the Journal recognized that there might be some problems in the card market, even if I am less sanguine that a fix will emerge from the market itself. Still, I want to address a few points in the WSJ editorial, though, that should not go unchallenged.