Posted on 10/11/2008 9:48:19 AM PDT by roughman
I think this would be a great and popular proposal. Most credit card companies get away with loan sharking customers, which is prosecuted if organized crime does it. Credit card hell affects many people. Credit card companies can, almost arbitrarily, raise rates for just about any reason, even if you pay on time. This affects almost every family budget. I think McCain could make great points by proposing a mandated cap on credit card rates. What do you think?? Top rate of 10% ?
While you are at it, the lawn service that cuts our acre of grass charges $60 a visit. Could you get that reduced to $50?
Jack
You are kidding, right? Credit card abuse has nothing to do with “vague economics”. If Joe SixPack chooses to charge himself into financial ruin it’s not the credit card company’s fault.
It may sound ok on the face of it, but it would cause many to lose the ability to have a credit card. It’s the same rules that are/have been applied to subprime loans. Higher interest is due to the higher risk of credit to those with poor credit history. That’s as it should be, I’m afraid.
This would be an artificial restraint that would not benefit credit-worthy citizens. In fact, the impact would be negative.
“Unfair? Get a different card. Vote with your feet. This is NOT a socialist country - yet.”
Well said. I’ve closed my accounts and cut up the cards save for one. I kept that one because the company offered to drop the APR from 13% to 4% if I agreed to stay with them. Negotiate with them. They’ll offer you a better rate if they want to keep you...BUT keep the outstanding balances down. They’ve jacked up the rates before. They can do it again.
Do as I do.
Carry an Amex Gold card.
You have to pay off the balance every month and there is NO interest whatsoever.
People with 22 Visas and Mastercards they use and just make the minimum payments deserve the messes they get into for their poor judgnment. I have no sympathy for them.
How about giving everyone a magnifying glass so they can read the fine print? That’d go a long way towards keeping rates down.
Gov’t needs to get out of the way, not put more regulations on our economy. This is a silly idea to buy an election.
You'll notice that they are NOT REQUIRED to put the date of mailing on the mail piece.
That decision was made by the USPS in response to a request by the credit card operators in Delaware and North Dakota.
The bureaucrats who made the decision can be identified by name.
Oh, in case you missed the point, the bills for the cards arrive late enough that those who pay by mail probably don't get their payments in early enough to beat the "due by" date and thereby get hit with a "late fee" ~
This is all done by design.
The USPS should be required to require that a date of mailing be printed on the envelope of all First-Class Mail of a commercial nature.
And yes, whack the credit card operators ~ give them a standard of LIBOR +4.
I pay cash for everything. If I don’t have the money, I don’t buy. Puts me in tight spots sometimes, but keeps me out of trouble.
I think he should propose that the gubmint give everybody a free new GM or Ford vehicle.
It will keep the factories humming, workers fully employed, and we can pay for it with, er..., um..., more Chinese loans! That’s the ticket!
what a joke.
All capping the interest rate at 10% would do is allow the same idiots that are paying 20% interest the ability to go out and charge more since their interest payment on outstanding balances would be cut in half.
A cap?! You know anything about economics?
You meant to post on some lefty forum, right ?
but setting credit card maximums?...don't agree....if your credit is so bad that you would sign up for such a card, maybe you deserve to pay high fees..(not you personally)
Socialism. No thanks.
McCain should propose that FReepers who post vanities espousing socialism be required to stick around and respond.
The solution to the credit card ripoff is easy. Don’t use the damn things or, if you must, pay it off each month.
Government intrusion is not the answer. We need to rein in our spending habits, it’s way to easy to “Just charge it”. Once we change our habits, I think the credit card companies will restructure their interest rates.
Agreed. I don’t buy anything I can’t pay for in cash. We all knew about this interest rate thing with credit cards, didn’t we?
I live in Los Angeles. I spent a good deal of time dating either Latino or Philipino women (4 different women)these last 20 years. I can’t tell you how many times these women tried to cajole me into buying these $200 pairs of jeans, or $90 LaCrosse shirts... the poorer the women that I dated were, the better clothes they wore. And this thing with buying staple things like aspirin with a Target credit card that they then run up to $2000 .
I don’t get that.
Furthermore, when you make $30,000 a year, you should be buying your clothes at Walmart, or the Salvation Army (which I did for many years, when my child support payments were in effect). But their paycheck take home did not seem to matter. They simply lived in the moment and did not think about what the fixed bills were, any given month. The status of the clothing brand was far more important to them.
I recall just being flabergasted by trips to the Mall. And we would go to Nordstrom or May Company, places like that, and there would be some kind of sale. 50 or so people would be crowded around a bin full on designer jeans marked down from $250 to $150. Very few naturally born Americans in those groups of people, I might add.
Why would someone pay $150 for a pair of jeans that in my opinion are worth only $40 tops.
I’d be against this if the credit card industry was really equitable. Credit cards are supposed to be unsecured debt.
Instead the banking industry lobbied for years, and Biden helped, to make it very very difficult to discharge credit card debt even with a bankruptcy.
So the government protects banks from their stupidity but you all seem to think its wrong for the government to protect individuals.
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