Word: mastercard
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...always so. The 1964 "Daisy" ad was practically avant-garde. Today, while Madison Avenue produces some of the most sophisticated programming on the air, most political ads remain stuck in the Stone Age. Nader looked like a philosopher king simply for doing a couple of funny parodies of MasterCard and Monster.com spots. Both appealed smartly to voter cynicism about the major parties (and corporations), but neither outdid your average sneaker-company...
...Despite getting in trouble with MasterCard this summer, Nader rips off another Madison Avenue standard - the Monster.com ad with all the little kids (itself a rip-off of those sanctimonious International Paper spots). "I want to vote for the lesser of two evils... I want to be disillusioned... I want the government to ignore me." Funny stuff from a man who if you turn him off after five minutes can leave a very deep impression...
Justice asserts that the big brands' coziness limits competition and that together they unfairly keep other teams (read American Express and Discover) off the playing field. Since 1976--after a Justice Department review nudged the brands toward so-called duality--banks have been able to issue both Visa and MasterCard. The brands are actually joint ventures owned by the banks that issue cards. Trouble is, the government says, the same powerful banks control both associations. The biggest banks have been able to sit on one brand's board of directors and hold great sway in the other. That...
...phalanx of the nation's largest retailers--Wal-Mart, Sears, Roebuck & Co., and the Limited among them--are suing Visa and MasterCard, saying they too were overcharged. The merchants will argue before a federal judge in Brooklyn that they are forced to accept and pay an artificially high fee on debit-card sales. They hope to wring $8.1 billion from the defendants in this class action--a number that would triple, if they win, under federal antitrust...
...even used Visa's archrival, American Express, for help. Justice opened its current investigation in 1993; by 1996, Amex had enlisted, arguing that the restrictive by-laws should go. In other countries, the company points out, it is free to issue credit cards through banks. As MasterCard general counsel Noah Hanft says of Justice's fix, however, "it's a remedy that seems catered to suit the needs of Amex." Amex is not an official party to the suit, though its lawyers attend and--an envious Visa official points out--bring seat cushions for the courtroom's wooden pews...