Robert Reich: The Great Credit Card Battle To Come

The Great Credit Card Battle To Come


The next front in the banking wars will be over credit cards. Some of the nation's biggest bankers -- including representatives of Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, and other recipients of billions of taxpayer dollars -- are meeting today with the President to ask him back off his move to reform credit-card lending practices.

What's happening to credit card lending is a smaller replay of what happened to mortgage lending. For years, banks used every gimmick possible to get the public to use their cards -- regardless of the credit worthiness of the customer. They lured borrowers with low "teaser" rates. They told borrowers they could get by paying minimum balances.

And now that tens of millions of Americans are poorer than they used to be, the credit-card bubble is bursting. Credit card delinquencies are soaring. At the Bank of America, the largest U.S. lender by assets, 7.8 percent of credit-card accounts were delinquent in February by more than 30 days, up from 5.9 percent last August. Yesterday, Bank of America reported a $1.8 billion first-quarter loss in its credit-card services unit.

As delinquencies mount and profits shrink, card lenders are raising fees and interest rates, including rates on existing balances. They're also charging higher fees when customers exceed their credit limits, and shortening the duration of the teaser rates. When a customer makes a payment in excess of what's owed, card companies now routinely apply the excess to balances with the lowest rates rather than those carrying the highest rates. And banks disclose very little of relevance: For example, most customers have no idea how long it will take them to pay off their balances if they make minimum repayments, or what interest they're actually paying on their balances. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2009/04/credit-card-battle.html

on things like cash transactions.

on the very day they are trying to push obama around.

we have yet to see who pushed who -- or if they managed to find 'concensus'{i.e. we don't get fuck quite so deeply}.

our democratic party reps are backing off from roughing these bastards up -- i'm not feeling the love for anyone.

.... for now.

do you have options to bank with any other bank?

I just hate to see us paying for the bullets the crooks use to shoot at us, so to speak.
Since we do not seem to have fair representation from the Congress critters, one of our last
options to stop feeding the Corpocracy as much as possible.

I would truly love to see all of BOA and Citi customers walk away.
We did, a few years ago.

I've had quite enough. It's just been pure laziness on my part.

And the funny thing is, once we as a people have finally gotten fed up and do walk out,
then the piggies look at each other in total bewilderment and wonder "what the heck came over them?"