Protecting Credit Card Companies

I'd love to blog in depth about the Bankruptcy Deform Bill in Congress, but there's just too much to get into in one post. I'll try to break it up and hit different aspects, but there's simply no cohesive way to address just how misguided this bill is in this format. This is a pure corporate bill, and it is the result of a decade long assault on an individual's rights under the federal Bankruptcy Code by the credit industry.

This despite logging record profits year after year, and the fact that they have found ways to make money through fees and interest rates despite insolvency of certain debtors.

But in the early 1990s, companies such as AT&T and General Motors began issuing cards with variable rates and no fees, increasing competition. And by the middle of the decade, card companies were finding their traditional middle-class markets saturated. Their response: lend to riskier customers and make up for the danger of more defaults by charging higher rates and then new fees. McKinley, the industry analyst, said the firms were helped by a 1996 Supreme Court case that gave card companies new protections against state regulation of fees.

And let's not forget they also charge the businesses that accept the credit cards as payments. Most discouraging is that this administration has overseen the largest burden relief on corporate responsibility in all facets of American life. From protecting workers' safety, to environmental responsibility, to rewarding bad citizenship with tax breaks while jobs are shipped overseas, to deregulation that allows consumer prices on natural resources to soar while companies log record profits, this administration has basically handed over our country to corporate interests.

It doesn't take a genius to know that credit card companies invite much of the trouble they complain of. How many credit card solicitations do college students get? As a college student I was offered - and like the moron that I was at age 18 accepted - credit from multiple credit card companies. This despite having a part time job that paid $150 a week. I didn't lie on the credit application, yet they deemed me creditworthy enough to give me a four figure limit. When that was maxed I got more solicitations - balance transfers and revolving credit became a part of my everyday life before I had completed one year in college.

Student loan money paid them off, and now I'm unsecured debt free. Sure, they were hedging their bets that I'd be able to pay in the future. But poor people get offered credit like Easter candy - Citifinancial loves to give out "secured" loans to poor people with interest rates in the double digits. The loan is secured by a television or some other asset that has a value grossly lower than the actual amount loaned out. The borrower can't afford a pot to pee in, but gets loans and credit card solicitations for thousands of dollars of credit. The heartless will say "they should show restraint" and I say "yes they should." Except I'm talking about the credit companies - responsibility for one's actions is a two way street.

Offering up money to a person that's never had it is like offering a cheeseburger to an Ethiopian. It's time our government started protecting us - it's time corporations were held accountable for their own actions as well. This bill represents yet another shift of the financial burden of America onto the backs of the poor and middle class - I mean, honestly, do you think Bill Gates uses a credit card?