From Dailykos.com:
Today's NYT contains an excellent example of a moral blight upon this country that not only offends most Americans' values -- it also robs from their pocketbooks. And the government, while fully empowered to rein in this monster, has refused to do so. The villain? Credit card companies that charge exorbitant fees and raise interest rates without warning even on those borrowers who never miss a payment, who always played by the rules:
When Ed Schwebel was whittling down his mound of credit card debt at an interest rate of 9.2 percent, the MBNA Corporation had a happy and profitable customer. But this summer, when MBNA suddenly doubled the rate on his account, Mr. Schwebel joined the growing ranks of irate cardholders stunned by lenders' harsh tactics.
Mr. Schwebel, 58, a semiretired software engineer in Gilbert, Ariz., was not pleased that his minimum monthly payment jumped from $502 in June to $895 in July. But what really made him angry, he said, was the sense that he was being punished despite having held up his end of the bargain with MBNA.
"I paid the bills the minute the envelope hit the desk," said Mr. Schwebel, who had accumulated $69,000 in debt over five years before the rate increase. "All of a sudden in July, they swapped it to 18 percent. No warning. No reason. It was like I was blindsided."
Mr. Schwebel had stumbled into the new era of consumer credit, in which thousands of Americans are paying millions of dollars each month in fees that they did not expect and that strike them as unreasonable. Invoking clauses tucked into the fine print of their contract agreements, lenders are doubling or tripling interest rates with little warning or explanation.
I say that it is immoral when a large bank screws customers who held up their end of the bargain. I say that it is immoral when the bank is allowed to do so through use of contracts of adhesion, mandatory arbitration clauses, and an utter absence of sensible regulation. And I say it is immoral for the government to enable all of this because the credit card issuers are among the most powerful lobbys in Washington. I'd wager most Americans agree. I'm no theologian, but the quote from Ezekiel at the top of this post indicates that usury has long been frowned upon in the Judeo-Christian tradition. These aren't "Democratic values" -- these are basic values of a society that values fair play. But they are values that Democrats are, by virtue of their politics, more likely to fight for.
The fight against credit card robber barons is a moral fight, a winning issue, and one that fits into the Democratic Party's mission. Now, I know there are a lot of Dem politicians -- too many, really -- who are in the pockets of the credit companies, but on the whole, we are a party that can carry this banner. The core Democratic value could be expressed, as Clinton often did, as "if you work hard and play by the rules, you should get ahead." That value is being abused today by the credit issuers and their sycophants on the Hill. It's time for us to raise fair credit regulation as one of our moral wedge issues. What are some others?
Today's NYT contains an excellent example of a moral blight upon this country that not only offends most Americans' values -- it also robs from their pocketbooks. And the government, while fully empowered to rein in this monster, has refused to do so. The villain? Credit card companies that charge exorbitant fees and raise interest rates without warning even on those borrowers who never miss a payment, who always played by the rules:
When Ed Schwebel was whittling down his mound of credit card debt at an interest rate of 9.2 percent, the MBNA Corporation had a happy and profitable customer. But this summer, when MBNA suddenly doubled the rate on his account, Mr. Schwebel joined the growing ranks of irate cardholders stunned by lenders' harsh tactics.
Mr. Schwebel, 58, a semiretired software engineer in Gilbert, Ariz., was not pleased that his minimum monthly payment jumped from $502 in June to $895 in July. But what really made him angry, he said, was the sense that he was being punished despite having held up his end of the bargain with MBNA.
"I paid the bills the minute the envelope hit the desk," said Mr. Schwebel, who had accumulated $69,000 in debt over five years before the rate increase. "All of a sudden in July, they swapped it to 18 percent. No warning. No reason. It was like I was blindsided."
Mr. Schwebel had stumbled into the new era of consumer credit, in which thousands of Americans are paying millions of dollars each month in fees that they did not expect and that strike them as unreasonable. Invoking clauses tucked into the fine print of their contract agreements, lenders are doubling or tripling interest rates with little warning or explanation.
I say that it is immoral when a large bank screws customers who held up their end of the bargain. I say that it is immoral when the bank is allowed to do so through use of contracts of adhesion, mandatory arbitration clauses, and an utter absence of sensible regulation. And I say it is immoral for the government to enable all of this because the credit card issuers are among the most powerful lobbys in Washington. I'd wager most Americans agree. I'm no theologian, but the quote from Ezekiel at the top of this post indicates that usury has long been frowned upon in the Judeo-Christian tradition. These aren't "Democratic values" -- these are basic values of a society that values fair play. But they are values that Democrats are, by virtue of their politics, more likely to fight for.
The fight against credit card robber barons is a moral fight, a winning issue, and one that fits into the Democratic Party's mission. Now, I know there are a lot of Dem politicians -- too many, really -- who are in the pockets of the credit companies, but on the whole, we are a party that can carry this banner. The core Democratic value could be expressed, as Clinton often did, as "if you work hard and play by the rules, you should get ahead." That value is being abused today by the credit issuers and their sycophants on the Hill. It's time for us to raise fair credit regulation as one of our moral wedge issues. What are some others?
