Banks Condemn Credit Card Restrictions While They Receive Taxpayer Bailout

LA Times:

You've got to love the banking industry.

As our friends in the financial sector were passing the hat among taxpayers last week for $700 billion in bailouts to cover their crappy mortgage investments, they were simultaneously condemning the House of Representatives' passage of a "Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights," which aims to crack down on some of the industry's more troublesome practices.

Read the whole story: LA Times

Comments

[OgreDaddy]

Of course banks are going to fight tooth and nail to prevent people from bailing on their
unsecured debt.

[FogBelter]

Banks that are exposed to credit card debt will find themselves in a precarious position if the economy doesn't respond to the $700 Billion dollar bailout package. All the focus has been on Mortgage backed securities as being the culprit and weak link in this crisis, but there are also Securities that are backed by Credit Card debt. If the Credit Card users start defaulting on their card balances due to the economic downturn we will find ourselves in a worse place than we were with Mortgages, because credit card debt is unsecured debt.

The credit card restrictions the Banks abhor are irrelevant if a default tsunami manifests anyway.

[pithy]

Not all credit card debt is unsecured - normally your house can't be grabbed for credit card debt - UNLESS you took out a home equity loan - if you did, it's my understanding the credit card companies can come after you.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, please.

[LeeCalif]

The banks protest against restrictions yet take our money and you think this is normal ???

Open the debates. Let Nader clear the fog Obama increasingly spreads.
At least check Nader out. You'll find you both will be in agreement and it will show you how listening to Obama's corporate messaging has ALREADY lowered your expectations.
And you know what? When expectations are lowered it is easier to be afraid of... what if..... we have to settle or.....
Don't settle again. You have been settling every 4 years for how many years now ??

[RealHRCFansVoteObama]

Annoy the banks, get rid of your credit cards - even if you have to do it one by one.

Boycotts still work.

[billyfitz]

Any bank that lobeyed against te credit card restrictions should be barred from participating in the bailout.

[pupbayer]

Someone should ask Joe "Credit Card" B iden what he thinks about this. I'm sure he has plans to take care of his big contributors (credit card companies) as soon as they are elected.

[mulegino]

Nothing less than a new New Deal is necessary to restore America to its preeminence. This would include the restoration of fixed currency exchange rates, the reenactment and updating of the Glass Steagall act, punitive tax measures for corporations outsourcing jobs, a crash program for rebuilding and restoring America's infrastructure, a tax code that rewards saving as opposed to consumption and a sane foreign policy of cooperation as opposed to confrontation.
This is a tall order, but maybe, just maybe, Americans are starting to understand that the American middle class has long ago passed the polar bear and the spotted oil on the endangered species list.

[Zeje]

Exactly!

[Egalitare]

Not a tall order. A small price to pay to avoid what my parents lived thru!

[lornejl]

Anyone notice how corporations are protected, but average joe not so much ? BYING Congress is the cheapest investment of all time, multiples returned on the investment.

[schatsie]

In the Robber Baron times, the politicians were for sale to the tune of $1 in bribes to $10 benefit to the Barons... the Modern Barons are getting away with the ratio of 1 to 100...and these barons are not being audited, this is criminal negligence on the part of the government.

My greatgrandfather died because it was cheaper to let railroad people die, that put breaks on the trains....There was a federal law that had to be passed before this was done,,

Love Canal..Enron, etc and now 600,000 lost their jobs this year and now mention of extending unemployment benefits..and how many more layoffs by the end of the year???? and how many of these hundreds of thousand of people are getting GOLDEN Parachutes???

.

[harker6868]

No one mentions that a significant portion of the money banks and credit companies claim to be in the hole is from high fees and processing costs as well as high interest rates, adding to the bottom line of many mortgages and credit card balances. In essence, banks have been allowed to set whatever fees and processing costs they see fit and then add that to the total balance. They call this the cost of doing business but it amounts to millions, perhaps billions in magic money lenders add on to a debtor's bottom line. I don't think a bail out should compensate banks for their own ridiculous pricing structures, structures that are being questioned and scrutinized more and more.

[Blurp]

This country's economic system is a sham. Average Americans have been dipping into credit for non-essentials for a long time, but now they have to dip into credit just to make ends meet. Congress votes a joke of a minimum wage increase once every decade or so, but raises its own salary every year. Both Democrats and Republicans are owned by the credit card and banking lobbies. Hell... Chase Bank's lawyers were the authors of the bankruptcy "reform" law, and their boys in Congress just rubber-stamped it. Credit card debt and debt in general is just today's sharecropping, the way the ownership class keeps the rest of us on a short leash. And now they're gonna get upwards of a trillion dollars of borrowed money on the backs of the taxpayer because their greed ran amok. Is this a system we want to perpetuate by bailing it out? Is this even a country worth fighting for anymore?

[darker]

Deregulation and LACK OF CONSUMER PROTECTION--taken away by Republicans!-- started the
whole ECONOMY MESS and subsequent crash.

It's time to DISCIPLINE MARKETS because they won't do that themselves.
RE-REGULATION of financial markets is need to PREVENT CRIMINAL GREED that
crashes us all.

I'm voting for common sense, responsibility, reliability, and that's NOT McCain.

[LINY516]

It is obvious that it's not the Democrats either. T

hey should have added credit card limits, and bankruptcy reform in this bailout bill Are the democrats so stupid that they actually believe that they are going to get a separate bill for the protection of the middle class? They had the perfect time (NOW) to provide sweeping protections for the middle class. As usual, the democrats "uucked fp"

[Zeje]

As usual...

[Gould123]

people this crack down should have come years ago! Credit is good used right! But it became a scam that riped off a lot of people! You should be happy about people liveing within their budget, and forceing creditcard comp. to help us do that!

[KCFreedom]

Of course,

It's bailout for banks,

It's "bankruptcy reform" for the rest of us.

Tanx!

[nastyvirus]

CREDIT is the problem. Eliminate credit cards and people will be forced to live within their means. No more bubbles of any kind, the economy will stabilize, albeit shrink, like Amy Poehler.

[GRA]

EVERYONE should stop calling the Government's decision to rescue GREEDY CAPITALIST a "BAILOUT" and call it by it's RIGHTFUL name: The assistance, especially money, food, and other necessities, given to the needy or dispossessed = WELFARE, a word, that until THEY were the dispossessed, REPUBLICANS vehemently opposed.

[ssaz]

I couldn't agree with you more, let's start calling it the Wall Street WELFARE program. Certainly, that would be the rhetoric crowed by the republicans if it were the common Joe getting the dough! :)