Thursday, April 23, 2009

Abuse By Credit Card Companies

The Obama administration’s latest attempt at protecting American consumers from abuse and fraud is to target the credit card companies. This is another industry where the Republicans and the Free Market Fundamentalists removed most of the pesky government rules and regulations via deregulation. By doing so the government allowed these companies almost total free reign. And of course the credit card companies went totally overboard and grossly abused many consumers.

I am absolutely in favour or regulating these crooks in the credit card industry. We need to go way beyond this however. Easy credit has been granted to far too many people who didn’t have any hope of paying these loans back. People who didn’t even have jobs or other source of income.

Using a credit card to borrow money is like taking heroin. It is horribly addictive and destructive.

The Republicans like to talk about traditional “American Values” like neither a lender nor a borrower be. It is simple. If you think that your drug dealer has been behaving unethically and has taken advantage of you, then stop taking drugs. Duh…

A somewhat tongue in cheek suggestion: If you don’t pay off the entire balance each month, then apply a tax payable to the government of one half of the balance carried forward.

Really. If you absolutely must borrow money, then do it some other more responsible way than by using credit cards.
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