Word: credit-card
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...reminder of how difficult it can be to pass effective financial regulation, even for something as minor and clearly exploitative as overdraft protection services. It doesn’t make you optimistic about ever setting good rules on credit cards, whose effect on our society is far more pernicious. Credit-card regulation passed last spring was a good start but ultimately does little more than limit banks’ ability to market credit cards to students and require them to warn you before they do something like raise your interest rates from 19 to 30 percent in the space...
...last time we got close to writing drastic regulation on credit or debit cards was in 1991, when 74 senators voted in favor of a 14 percent interest-rate cap on credit cards. George H. W. Bush had given a fundraising speech in New York where he talked about lowering credit-card rates, a bullet point that had been included at the last minute by his chief of staff but hadn’t been approved by his economic advisors. Support from a Republican president lent congressional Democrats the air cover to move a bill that received no more than...
...only green shoots that many non-Wall Street types have seen lately are the weeds sprouting in the parking lots of abandoned malls. Unemployment is marching toward 10%, and house foreclosures are still rising. If you're a day late with your credit-card payment or overdrawn by a few bucks on your ATM card, the bank (which your tax money helped bail out) is still sticking you with obscene fees and charges. Hence the question that so many of us are asking: Where's my bailout? (See 25 people to blame for the financial crisis...
Indeed, these banks ought to acknowledge that the government saved them. For starters, they ought to stop gouging the vulnerable among us with overdraft fees and credit-card games. "Reform" is supposed to take effect early next year, but banks have accelerated their gouging since the legislation passed...
Make no mistake; I'm livid at the Street, which is inflicting pain on people who don't deserve it and ruining things for moderates like me, who believe in markets but with intelligent regulation. And did I mention gouging people before new credit-card rules come in? I did. It's obscene...