Why Credit Card Companies Face Tough Times From Lawmakers Everywhere
Credit card companies, who stand accused of rip off practices, are facing mounting pressure from politicians all around the globe.
No matter where you go, be it the US, UK or Australia, credit card companies are experiencing a backlash from politicos, angry at the way consumers have been treated. The backdrop to this unfolding drama is toughening economic conditions for consumers who are now facing rising food, energy and mortgage bills, and are looking for help from their elected representatives.
The list of offences committed by credit card companies, in the eyes of legislators and the public, include lending to people who cannot afford to repay, charging excessive interest rates, dodgy billing practices, and alleged extortionate penalty charges.
In the US, credit card companies have come under fire from both Republicans and Democrats. The latest initiative to help protect consumers has come from former Democratic presidential contender Chris Dodd, who launched the CARD act - The Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act.
Senator Dodd wants greater regulation and supervision of the credit card industry to tackle sharp card practices by lenders.
He has also called for and end to âany time, any reason' interest rate hikes, where interest rates rise on multiple cards if one of a consumer's cards goes into default.
The CARD Act looks for credit card companies to apply payments to the card with the highest interest rate first to help consumers clear their debts faster. It also wants âdouble cycle billing' scrapped - where interest is effectively charged on balances already cleared. If the CARD Act becomes law, it would see an end to card companies charging interest on penalty charges, such as late payment fees.
Senator Dodd said his reforms were aimed at preventing some credit card companies dragging Americans deeper in to debt, and ending practices that, he argues, harm, rather than help, American families.
He added: "Americans do not deserve to be pushed down the economic ladder by credit card companies. It's wrong, it's unfair and it must end."
Another American politician backing the CARD Act is Republican Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, who in early 2008 launched a campaign for a Credit Cardholder's Bill of Rights in the states.
She said: "Credit card industry abuses have become more pronounced in this troubled economy as more families turn to their credit cards to help pay the bills, buy groceries and make ends meet. It's clear that America's credit cardholders need - and deserve - relief now." She also expressed concern that many American cardholders would be buried under mountains of inescapable debt, while waiting for help from the Fed.
In the UK, credit card firms were forced to curb late payment penalty charges, which saw many cardholders facing fees of up to £35 for missing payment deadlines.
On the far side of the Pacific, Australian credit card companies have come under fire for being too free and easy with their lending.
Linda Burney, New South Wales' Fair Trading Minister, recently said: "The ease of access to credit cards, the ready availability of increased credit limits, and lack of rigour applied by lenders to assess a person's ability to repay is leading to an ever increasing number of people being caught in a cycle of debt."
Tristan Dunston is an independent public relations consultant specialising in finance and privacy matters. He loves whitewater kayaking and photography
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com
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How much do credit card companies profit in a year?
I'm making a 10 min minumum documentary about Corporate Greed for class.I need some facts but its hard to find. The only ones I know of are the ones I learned in Financial Literacy with Dave Ramsey. Thanks for any help
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Can somebody find out thee addresses for these 3 credit card companies for me?
I had some extreme bad luck financially this year due to various reasons. I have hand written letters for Capital One Credit Cards Finance department, Goodyear credit cards finance department, and bank of america credit cards department. I've searched high and low on the internet for the correct address but can not find it at all. Also a bonuses would be if you could find me email addresses for finance departments of these companies. Thanks so much if you could help i would greatly apreiciate it.
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Is this a good list of what conservatives/republicans would do to this country if they were in charge?
1) Greatly reduce or entirely eliminate taxes on the rich, thereby forcing hard-pressed working families to painfully make up resulting revenue shortfalls.
2) Bust labor unions, cruelly preventing the collective bargaining that's the key reason why US workers ever won decent wages and benefits.
3) Stubbornly deny the existence of ominous climate change while blithely pumping more pollutants into the environment from lucrative, dirty industries and practices. Although reputable scientists say 350 carbon parts per atmospheric million is the safe limit for sustained life on Earth, Republicans dismiss the frightening fact that we're already at a carbon level of roughly 390 ppm.
4) Remove "restrictive" regulations on everything from investment banks and credit card companies to a broad array of "profit-eroding" consumer protections, leaving the American masses exposed to a host of resulting abuses and dangers.
5) Continue to criticize and insufficiently fund public education, advocating private schooling instead, thus entirely ignoring that progressive public systems are used in every country that has education outcomes superior to our own.
6) Outlaw abortion, under a fraudulently moral guise, compelling the US to bloodily join those benighted, backward nations where thousands of already-born, living, breathing, socially functioning females perish because of sexist denials of their basic reproductive rights.
7) Continue to recite a Pledge of Allegiance whose last six words are "with liberty and justice for all," while remaining numbly oblivious to the harsh hypocrisy of preventing our homosexual citizens from marrying.
8) Speak often and loftily of freedom, but engage in secret wiretapping, repression of domestic dissent, neo-McCarthyite witch hunts, Red-baiting name calling, and a panoply of Patriot Act transgressions against the Constitution of the United States...all under the misused rubric of "national security."
9) Show the rest of humankind nothing but bullying world-cop arrogance through endless US interventions and aggressions on foreign soil, resulting not just in countless lives extinguished in indefensible wars, and billions of badly-needed dollars flushed down the drain, but constant al Qaeda recruitment against hated Yankee interlopers.
10) Generally drive down the income levels of America's working-class majority, as a purported cost-saving corporate measure, without appreciating that a populace that's too poor to buy back what society produces is doomed to economic ruin. A living wage is the ultimate "stimulus," but try to find even one Republican who favors it!
11) Continue to lie about the alternative, affordable health care for all that some fifty world nations' people overwhelmingly support, thereby propagandistically leading Americans to think that having private insurance whose premiums are rising at rates three times higher than our pay -- and which routinely denies coverage when it's required most -- is somehow preferable
12) Unleash de facto ethnic cleansing against 12 million immigrant men, women, and children, making them contemporary equivalents of the Jewish scapegoats that Hitler blamed for hardships Germans experienced during a prior period of capitalist economic distress.
13) Shamefully try to lend credence to their avarice and social irresponsibility by revising the Bible to obscure passages that place human need before abject greed, attempting to turn it into a facilitating guide for modern peers of the temple moneychangers whose tables Jesus angrily knocked to the floor (and who undoubtedly wouldn't be mentioned in the amended version that one conservative group is actually, amazingly trying to put into circulation).
14) Give full vent to the intensely bigoted hatred that has crazed extremists dreaming of literally tearing Barack Obama to pieces and gassing all liberals...if only they could.
15) Place the livelihoods and lives of over 300 million Americans in the hands of incompetent ideological "purists" such as Sarah Palin.
While there are certainly Democrats who've yet to show spine in furtherance of vital change, let's be absolutely clear about the unmitigated disaster that would follow if Republicans, in their present ultra-rightist incarnation, ruled our country exactly as they wickedly wished.
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