From Blue Jersey: Senator Menendez has asked the Department of the Treasury to “restrict credit card companies that receive taxpayer dollars from imposing unilateral interest rate increases and other consumer-unfriendly practices.”
Read the letter here.
Credit cards have always been the last refuge for banks and other lenders, the mechanism they can use to generate revenue when other streams have dried up. Revolving balances — the money you keep on your card — is a huge moneymaker, as FRONTLINE showed a few years ago, thanks to the elimination of “a critical restriction: the limit on the interest rate a lender can charge a borrower.”
Deregulation, coupled with a revolution in technology that enables the almost real-time tracking of personal financial information and the emergence of nationwide banking, has facilitated the widening availability of credit cards across the economic spectrum. But for some, the cost of credit is often far greater than it appears.
According to Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren, the credit card companies are misleading consumers and making up their own rules. “These guys have figured out the best way to compete is to put a smiley face in your commercials, a low introductory rate, and hire a team of MBAs to lay traps in the fine print,” Warren tells FRONTLINE.
The fine print includes rate hikes that can be applied not only to future balances, but to existing balances, shifting due dates and unilaterally set late fees. The result is a tremendous hardship on people who have come to rely on their plastic.
Add to this the restrictions placed on bankruptcy under Clinton and you can see just how venal the system we have is.
So, kudos to Sen. Menendez, but let’s not view this as anything more than a minor correction — maybe a first step toward leveling the playing fields.
Hank Kalet 
Sorry, at the risk of annoying Annonysocialist and all the other R\’s and D\’s reading, let\’s really solve the problem. First, we don\’t have \”deregulation\” of anything. We DO have a lot of regulations and bureaucrats that don\’t (work that is). And, the laws favor \”fine print\”.Second, Senator M should be focusing on the screwing the taxpayers are taking at the hands of the Congress. Mulit trillion dollar deficits and billion dollar programs make the credit card companies look downright honest.Third, what laws, regulations, diktats, and customs get repealed. Just layering on more, gets us nowhere but deeper in the \”barbara streisand\”.I SUGGEST that we really deregulate credit cards. Close the courts to disputes. Make it a real wild west show. Caveat emptor. IMHO, the market place will be sorted out in short order. DEBIT cards will emerge as will CASH. And then no one can complain, because they will only have themselves to blame. And, in reality, that\’s all they have now. But there\’s an illusion that politicians and bureaucrats are looking out for you.
I am on a brief hiatus from commenting on the ridiculous cult that is libertarianism. But if I were to make a comment, it would be the following:It\’s official, libertarianism is just so much soulless blather, a rigid blind ideology drained of any human empathy. There is no functioning libertarian government on earth today…oh wait, Somalia, but then again it\’s not really functioning. So typical of right wingers and libertarians to blame the victims of fraud and corruption. It\’s always the victim\’s fault in right wing/libertarian world. Jeebus, even some very smart and well informed people were shafted by Madoff. But according to libertarian, Madoff should be freed and the victims should be jailed because they were too stupid to see through this fraudster. There ya go, that was simple.
>It's official, libertarianism is just so much soulless blather,Yes, the big government lovers just love to have anything declared \”official\”. Like that means anything at all. As if their \”laws\” accomplish anything. Unlike real \”laws\”, like Gravity, Unintended Consequences, or Diminishing Returns.> a rigid blind ideology drained of any human empathy. Yes, being \”free\” is so un-human, un-empathetic, un-conscience-able.>There is no functioning libertarian government on earth today…How can there be? Humans are blinded. Most believe we \”need\” government. In the world of the blind, the one eyed man is king. How can we understand when our perceptions are wrong.>Somalia, but then again it's not really functioning. Well, it's functioning. Despite the UN trying to install one group of thugs as the winner. See the other gooferments don't want anyone to look behind the curtain!>So typical of right wingers and libertariansAt least, you've now learned that us little L libertarians are neither RIGHT or LEFT. Another paradigm or meme that has been corrected. The false choice as if there were only two choices. We can just choose freedom and liberty. And libertarians want it for everyone. > to blame the victims of fraud and corruption. It's always the victim's fault No, but choices do have consequences. When we choose badly, who else to blame? You, me, Herb, the guy down the street.> some very smart and well informed people were shafted by Madoff.Who was enabled by the gooferment's supposed guaranty of regulation. And, the regulators were so ft and lazy that even someone giving them evidence for almost a decade couldn't even get them to look into it.> But according to libertarian, Madoff should be freed No, but the ethic should be restitution. Putting him in a cell and having the taxpayers support him for another decade is counter productive. Put him on the street may give people as chance to express their opinion of him. AND, another point, the \”fines\” and \”forfeitures\” to the government doesn't help \”restitution\” to the victims. >the victims should be jailed because they were too stupid to see through this fraudsterNo, jail is ONLY appropriate for those guilty parties that can't control themselves and will likely inflict violence on some one else.>There ya go, that was simple.It was simple. You can lob them over the fence all day long. But, it doesn't change the essential truth. Men were born to be free. Government uses force to enslave us. And, it's our own thinking that gives them power. Let's all change our thinking?