Biden as VP: Good for Credit Card Industry

American Banker makes the point (sorry, no link) that the selection of Delaware Sen. Joe Biden as Barack Obama’s running mate, widely speculated, followed by a Obama win in November could set off a sequence of events that could be a notable plus for the credit card industry.

Here goes:

1. Obama picks Biden and then wins election;
2. Biden leaves Senate and gives up seat as head of Senate Foreign Relations Committee ;
3. Biden succeeded as head of Foreign Relations by Chris Dodd of Connecticut, now head of the Senate Banking Committee, who’s lately pushing for new restrictions on the card industry;
4. Dodd in turn gives up seat running the Banking Committee so he can run Foreign Relations;
5. He is succeeded as Banking Committee chairman by (drumroll, please) Tim Johnson of South Dakota. South Dakota is of course perhaps the most card industry-friendly state in country, as lenders have domiciled their banks their in order to operate under the its lenient banking laws.

It’s a fair bet that Johnson won’t be leaning on the industry any time soon. . . .

Comments

[woodsey]

I prefer Beiden as secretary of state; otherwise same scenario.

2008 Aug 21 04:58 PM

[Wiley Rapscallion]

That seems a pretty far-fetched sequence of events that is grounded on what seems like a fundamentally flawed assumption -- if Dodd were to leave Banking, for any reason (it's been suggested he could be Treasury Secretary for instance) then the person most likely next in line is Jack Reed of Rhode Island. God bless Tim Johnson and everything, but he's really not up to the physical rigors of running a committee.

2008 Aug 21 06:47 PM