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June 16, 2011 at 9:00 PM UTC

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This article is part of the June 20, 2011 issue of businessweek.

LED FREE MARKETS RULE, AND BANKS WIN, ON DEBIT-CARD FEES
The Dodd-Frank financial reform law requires the Federal Reserve to set a limit on how much banks may charge for processing debit-card transactions. The average fee now is 44 per transaction. The Fed has proposed a limit of 12 beginning July 21.

The banks, naturally, don't care for this. These transaction fees bring them about $20 billion a year. So they have been conducting one of those ludicrous lobbying campaigns that sweep over Washington from time to time, warning of higher prices, reduced services, plagues of locusts, more naked congressmen on Twitter, and just about any deplorable development you can think of if the new regulations are allowed to go through. On June 8 the Senate defeated a proposal to delay the limit for six months to allow time for further study.