Why Bernie Sanders Should be Your New Best Friend
If you were like many tired revellers, shortly after January rung in the New Year, you took some time to review how things were going in your life and an area of concern was the amount of credit card debt you owed. In fact in 2004 almost 70% of Americans named reducing credit card debt as their number one resolution, for the first time ranking it above the perennial promise to lose a few pounds after the holidays. The level of concern has only increased since then.
So how are your credit card balances doing? Probably not much better than the beginning of the year. The balances perhaps at best are holding steady while your interest rates and the fees are going up. You may have also gotten a newly updated agreement from your credit card company. The most recent one I received was 8 pages, double-sided, on 11"x14" sheets of paper. An agreement that the head of the Harvard Law School, who specializes in corporate contracts, admits she has a hard time understanding.
Why is there no accountability to the public interest? Financial Services companies that issue credit cards are the number one business sector in the amount of contributions made to political campaigns.
Your Senators and Congressmen don't represent you, the consumer, or the public interest on this issue, they are indebted to the credit card companies who finance their political campaigns. There are rare exceptions, and this is where Bernie Sanders comes in. He is a Congressman from Vermont who introduced the "Loan Shark Prevention Act" - calling credit card companies what they really are? Perhaps being a little more subtle may have helped the cause, because a year has gone by since this bill has been introduced and there is little support from other Senators and Congressmen who are on the dole from the "loan sharts" - oops, I mean Financial Services companies. The bill rationally asks for credit card interest rate caps, fee caps, and the end of the various credit card interest bait-and-switch marketing schemes that allow introductory interest rates to be raised at will for a myriad of reasons (refer to that lengthy user agreement).
But what can credit card companies legally do, surely there are some limits?
Maybe not - "Under the 'Truth in Lending' law, as long as a company gives you two weeks' notice, they can change anything they want," says Jean Ann Fox, director of consumer protection at the Consumer Federation of America in Washington, D.C.
So what can you do? Make Bernie your new best friend. Call him and let him know you support his efforts and ask him to reintroduce his bill in Congress.
It may also be time to take a national day off from using our credit cards to show Congress and the Financial Services companies that Americans are no longer willing to remain quiet on this issue.
Its time to restore truth and fairness to credit card lending practices.
So how are your credit card balances doing? Probably not much better than the beginning of the year. The balances perhaps at best are holding steady while your interest rates and the fees are going up. You may have also gotten a newly updated agreement from your credit card company. The most recent one I received was 8 pages, double-sided, on 11"x14" sheets of paper. An agreement that the head of the Harvard Law School, who specializes in corporate contracts, admits she has a hard time understanding.
Why is there no accountability to the public interest? Financial Services companies that issue credit cards are the number one business sector in the amount of contributions made to political campaigns.
Your Senators and Congressmen don't represent you, the consumer, or the public interest on this issue, they are indebted to the credit card companies who finance their political campaigns. There are rare exceptions, and this is where Bernie Sanders comes in. He is a Congressman from Vermont who introduced the "Loan Shark Prevention Act" - calling credit card companies what they really are? Perhaps being a little more subtle may have helped the cause, because a year has gone by since this bill has been introduced and there is little support from other Senators and Congressmen who are on the dole from the "loan sharts" - oops, I mean Financial Services companies. The bill rationally asks for credit card interest rate caps, fee caps, and the end of the various credit card interest bait-and-switch marketing schemes that allow introductory interest rates to be raised at will for a myriad of reasons (refer to that lengthy user agreement).
But what can credit card companies legally do, surely there are some limits?
Maybe not - "Under the 'Truth in Lending' law, as long as a company gives you two weeks' notice, they can change anything they want," says Jean Ann Fox, director of consumer protection at the Consumer Federation of America in Washington, D.C.
So what can you do? Make Bernie your new best friend. Call him and let him know you support his efforts and ask him to reintroduce his bill in Congress.
It may also be time to take a national day off from using our credit cards to show Congress and the Financial Services companies that Americans are no longer willing to remain quiet on this issue.
Its time to restore truth and fairness to credit card lending practices.
posted by Fauntleroy at
9:23 AM
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