CEI Today: Target data breach, greenhouse gas regulation, regulation roundup
TARGET DATA BREACH – JOHN BERLAU
OpenMarket.org: Target Breach — Are Dodd-Frank “Swipe Fee” Price Controls to Blame?
This is just the latest incident in which banks and credit unions that issue credit and debit cards have had to step up to the plate after a retailer’s customer data is compromised. As noted by Wisconsin Credit Union League CEO Brett A. Thompson, upon a data breach at Michaels craft stores in 2001, the financial institutions “had to determine which states were involved, monitor potentially compromised accounts, manually reduce limits for both ATM and PIN transactions, monitor ATM transactions in the affected states, notify debit card holders of potential fraud on their accounts, issue new debit cards to those whose accounts were compromised and refund money to fraud victims.”
Yet how do retailers repay banks and credit unions and their own customers? By complaining about how much the have to pay in credit and debit card “swipe fees” and lobbying for price controls, such as the Durbin Amendment of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial “reform,” which limited what retailers can be charged for debit cards to 21 cents per swipe (a level a judge has now ruled is not draconian enough in a pending court case!).
GREENHOUSE GAS REGULATION – MARLO LEWIS
What about Title V? The purpose of Title V is to facilitate Clean Air Act compliance by consolidating all of a covered source’s pollution control requirements into a single, comprehensive, operating permit. The 101st Congress enacted Title V as part of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. In its deliberations on those amendments, the 101st Congress considered and rejected proposals to regulate greenhouse gases from both mobile and stationary sources. Clearly, the Congress that enacted Title V had no intention of applying it to sources based on their greenhouse gas emissions.
More than 99% of the estimated 6.1 million ”sources” that emit enough CO2 to qualify as “major” under Title V are small (mostly non-industrial) facilities and currently have no emission control requirements to comply with or report. A significant fraction of those sources would have compliance requirements to report in Title V permits if they were subject to PSD permitting and BACT for CO2. But, as shown above, Congress never intended for the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases through the PSD program. It would be extremely absurd for Congress to impose Title V permitting fees and paperwork burdens on sources with no emission control requirements. There is not a shred of evidence that Congress ever did so.
REGULATION ROUNDUP – RYAN YOUNG
OpenMarket.org: CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The last week before the holidays was a week like any other, with new rules covering everything from charitable donations to video programming for the blind.