Word: credit-card
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...this come about? The credit-card industry seized on a sharp increase in bankruptcy filings in 1996 and 1997 to mount an intensive lobbying campaign for legislation that would make it easier to collect from borrowers who file for bankruptcy. A sophisticated public-relations blitz created the image of a bankruptcy system rife with abuse and in need of reform. That campaign told of rich people walking away from their debts, courtesy of bankruptcy court. It told of responsible families who paid their bills being forced to pick up the costs of more affluent Americans and others who were bilking...
Members of Congress echoed the industry line. Declared Representative George Gekas, the Pennsylvania Republican who shepherded the legislation through the House (and who has collected $30,000 in political contributions since 1997 from bankers and credit-card companies): "In 1997 Americans filed an all-time record of 1.33 million consumer-bankruptcy petitions, which erased an estimated $40 billion in consumer debt. Those losses are passed on to [other] consumers, resulting in a hidden tax for every American household. The only reasonable explanation is that the stigma of bankruptcy is all but dead. It is simply too easy to file...
...when she got a job interviewing families in an office, she owed thousands of dollars to the credit-card companies--much of it in late fees. That's when the threatening calls and letters surged. "They would call me on the job," she says. "That was very embarrassing. They call you early in the morning. They call you late at night. Sometimes I get calls at 10 o'clock at night. And they are very nasty." To placate them, she sent $200 to $300 on occasion. "But when the bill came the next month, it seemed like it went higher...
...same study projected that the total amount that unsecured creditors, like credit-card companies, might be expected to collect from all Chapter 7 filers added up to "less than $1 billion annually...
...Congress's own investigative arm, the General Accounting Office, criticized two studies financed by the credit-card industry that purported to show that a substantial number of debtors could pay more. Questioning their assumptions, data and sampling procedures, the GAO said that "neither report provides reliable answers to the questions of how many debtors could make some repayment and how much debt they could repay...