Word: credit-card
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...best time, you might think, to sell shares in the biggest initial public offering (IPO) in Wall Street history. Especially not a financial IPO. Yet here we have credit-card giant Visa, now owned by its member banks, announcing plans to peddle up to 446 million shares of stock in late March for an expected take of between $15 billion and $19 billion...
...card habits are finally taking a toll. With more than a billion cards in our wallets, we floated some $937 billion in outstanding credit-card debt as of last November, according to the Federal Reserve. The average card-holding household has $9,659 in credit card debt, up from $2,966 in 1990. Seduced by 0% interest rates on balances transferred from other cards and blanketed with "convenience checks" that let us pay off other bills while card debt mounts, it is more tempting than ever to say yes. But whereas even a year ago, folks could tap their home...
...with politicians angry with the bankers over the subprime fiasco, the heat is rising on the industry's credit-card segment. One of the strongest proposed changes is Levin's provision to limit interest rate increases to no more than seven percentage points above the initial rate. "Too many card issuers engage in very, very severe abuses and outrageous practices. It?s indefensible," says Levin, who arrived at seven, because it is about 50% above many cards' initial interest rate of around...
...reason the card industry is free to raise prices on existing customers at any time and for any reason is tied to deregulation, which began in banking in the 1970s and effectively eliminated caps both on interest and fees. Thanks to mergers and consolidation, the top six card issuers?Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, American Express, Capital One and Discover?now float about 75% of all outstanding credit-card debt, according to The Nilson Report. Consolidation allows competitors to be less competitive: from 1995 to 2005 the average late fee soared 162% from $12.83 to $33.64, according to CardTrak.com...
...loss of job or a 'life event' such as health problems (and medical bills), death or divorce," wrote analyst Chris Brendler of Stifel Nicolaus in a January report. Today's unemployment rate has yet to cause alarm, but it's the X factor that could determine how much worse credit-card defaults may get as recession looms...