It's not ALL bad

Apparently Donald Trump is on a rampage to get credit card companies to reduce their interchange fees; the % (I think around 2%) that stores pay Visa and Mastercard. These rates are something like 8x what they pay in Europe (something similar is true of realtor commissions), and it seems to me like a failure of the market system that these fees are still so high. Therefore I am 100% with DT on this, even if the Economist surely is not.

You may also have heard that DT wants to force banks to cap their interest rates at 10%. While on the surface it sounds reasonable, I can see the problem with this: namely, banks will simply stop offering credit, and people will end up borrowing from ever sketchier and more expensive sources. Meanwhile, it will act as a big drag on economic activity.

I am not completely convinced by this, but I do think it makes some sense.

Of course there is a larger point that none of these initiatives should be at the discretion of a single unhinged individual. If they are to be done, it should go through some sort of at least nominally bipartisan process. But it seems like that ship has long since sailed.

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