If there was any bill that is overdue, it is the Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights.
Adam Levitin of the blog site Credit Slips has posted on the subject today. Credit Slips is a University of Illinois-based joint site of a group of academics (the other universities represented: Harvard, Georgetown, Michigan, Ohio, and Iowa) concerned with and about credit and bankruptcy issues. Levitin favors the bill, H.R. 5244, introduced by NY Rep. Carolyn Maloney.
Levitin notes that the bill has some omissions -- "it doesn't deal with problems of price structure, rewards programs, antitrust, merchant fees, or identity theft prevention" and he observes that even with the bill, "the card industry might well find other ways to extract rents from unwitting cardholders even if the ways enumerated in the bill are shut down."
Exactly. The bill addresses only the worst abuses of the industry. It should not attempt to solve every problem. The bill has a better chance of sailing through Congress if it obtains the support of some credit card issuers who are following best practices. It should also create an incentive for issuers following best practices to educate the public about the worst practices.
Would we be having our current and future mortgage raft of foreclosures if the public had been better educated about mortgage practices, good and bad? Financial education should be part of the goal of the bill.
Credit Slips says that Rep. Maloney's bill is the most important credit card legislation in 40 years. It concludes that the bill is "an important first step to reining in an industry that has run wild in a regulatory no-man's land of outdated and threadbare federal laws, preempted state laws, and somnolent consumer protection by federal banking regulators."
This is a nice piece of writing. It includes an accessible primer on the ways that consumers have been hoodwinked on a grand scale by the ploys and practices of some credit card issuers. Support the Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights.
Obama voted against the 2005 bankruptcy bill .
Clinton was absent, so no vote was cast.
McCain voted for the BK bill.
Outlaw the fee harvesters.
They prey on the newly bankruptt, the poor, the desperate, and those
who don't understand what a trap they are getting into.
Barack voted NO on Dayton Amendment to the 2005 bankruptcy bill that would cap credit card rates at no more than 30%. I guess Obama agrees with his lobbyists donors that 40% interest is a "reasonable" interest rate.
So much for being progressive.
Arkansas used to have an effective usury cap and banks still did business there. As I recall, it was about 12%. Prime plus five works for me and cap the BS fees as well.
Lastly, let's outlaw car title loan shops. We had them out of GA for awhile. Now they're back again since some of our state legislators have a vested interest in their return. Guess the only way to stop this greed is at the Federal level..
One part of the bill that may not be good though, is prohibiting them from giving subprime cards to "people who can't afford them". Pretty much everyone needs to have a card, even if it has a low limit, if they want to rent a car or other things or get a hotel room.
CREDIT CARD COMPANIES SUCK, REALLY, REALLY SUCK!
If you aren't happy with the price of a product (in this case, money) don't buy it. This bill will hurt credit card company profits which in turn hurt everyone else's interest rates! If the CC companies can't charge high fees to customers with bad credit, they are just going to shift the burden of that lost profit to the good customers by raising their rates. This is so obvious and is a foolish bill to support..