Occupy Wall Street

Dems Press Eric Holder To Investigate Banks For Colluding Over ATM Fees

Brian Beutler | October 14, 2011, 5:50AM

Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT)

If you're a member of Congress trying to rein in Wall Street, now's your moment, and Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) is seizing it.

Welch helped lead the effort in 2010 to limit the "swipe fees" banks can charge retailers for each debit card transaction -- fees retailers passed on to consumers. Those rules went into effect earlier this year and, as if to serve as recruiters for the anti-Wall Street protests spreading across the country, Bank of America and other financial firms decided to recoup the lost profits by imposing an ATM fee on their customers -- a penalty of sorts for having automated access to your own money.

In a functioning market this practice might have ended before it began, as disgruntled customers took their business to firms that didn't attempt to bilk their customers.

That's not happening. So Welch wants Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate these banks for collusive behavior.

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Health Care

Health Care Judge Skeptical Of Obama's 'Unprecedented' Law

Brian Beutler | October 15, 2010, 9:15AM

President Barack Obama

Yesterday, a District Court judge in Florida ruled that a lawsuit filed by 20 states and other plaintiffs can proceed. The development represents decidedly mixed news for the Obama administration and supporters of the health care law. The good news is that the judge -- Reagan appointee Roger Vinson -- threw out four of the plaintiffs' six complaints. The bad news is that he will hear the weightiest of their contentions -- that the individual mandate exceeds Congress' power to regulate under the Commerce Clause. And according to one of the foremost experts on the health care lawsuits, the ruling indicates that the judge is sympathetic to the plaintiffs.

"On the Commerce Clause argument he suggested it was going to take a lot to convince him that the government is right," says Professor Timothy Jost of Washington and Lee University. "They're going to really have to come up with something because [at least in the judge's mind] the law is pretty clear on that."

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