As I read today’s edition of The Washington Post on my Kindle this afternoon while awaiting the start of the Cal Poly vs. UC Riverside men’s soccer game (Cal Poly 5, UCR 0), I came across this article by Steven Pearlstein. The article is full of the beltway conventional wisdom about how wonderful the “Occupy Wall Street” movement is and how it is more genuine and a more consequential expression of public sentiment than any of the Tea Parties ever was.

As I read it, I thought how young and naïve columnist Steven Pearlstein is. And then I saw his picture. He’s either old enough to know better or takes a horrible photograph.

Of all of the palaver in his column, the one that should jump out at anyone who’s nominally well-informed was this:

I wish it were true that Bank of America’s bone-headed decision to charge a $5 monthly fee for debit cards would prove to be the point at which public opinion finally turned against those who blame government regulation for our economic problems.

I hold no brief for Bank of America. My experience with banks long ago turned sour. I prefer credit unions (and happen to have accounts at three different ones). But did Pearlstein, a business columnist for crying out loud, miss the proximate cause of Bank Of America’s $5 fee? It was government regulation in the first place that prompted the fees. Does Pearlstein read his own paper?

Banks argue that the fees are among the unintended consequences of the wide-ranging financial overhaul passed by Congress last year. One provision, sponsored by Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), directed the Federal Reserve to set new guidelines for the fees that banks charge merchants each time a debit card is swiped.

The debate over these swipe fees, also known as interchange, became the center of an intense and expensive lobbying battle this summer as banks attempted to roll back the legislation. After that effort failed, the Fed issued rules that capped the fees at 24 cents for an average debit card transaction of $38 — roughly half of what the industry had been collecting. The new cap takes effect Saturday and is expected to cost banks billions of dollars.

“I’m actually surprised it took Bank of America this long,” said Richard Hunt, president of the Consumer Bankers Association, a trade group. “This was going to happen when Congress got involved in price fixing.”

The government decided it knew better than the market how to price these fees and basically sided with retailers over the banks (previously retailers paid these fees as part of the cost of doing business—benefiting from not having to worry about bad checks). The senior senator from Illinois thought he knew better and who gets hurt? The poor and middle class.

Who does Pearlstein blame? Business.

You don’t want to pay the fee? Join a credit union.