Last month I talked about my displeasure with the predatory practices of the loathesome credit card industry, and I was promptly raked over the coals by my libertarian and arch conservative readers, who somehow find interest rates of 35-50% and obscene layers of fees wholly acceptable (to read some of the comments, you would thing they are vital or all credit would dry up). Apparently I did not learn my lesson, because I share Kevin Drum’s concerns:
I do not like the credit card industry. The revolting travesty of “universal default” is one reason. That they have become obscenely profitable by transforming themselves into little more than genteel loan sharks preying on the unfortunate is another. And the fact that despite all this they still insist that bankruptcy laws need to be tightened so they can squeeze another few dollars out of their already wretched clients is the final straw.
Kevin then links to this LA Times story, which is a must read.
People like Josephine McCarthy, for instance, a 71-year-old secretary at the Salem Baptist Church, less than a mile from where the Senate bill is being debating.
According to papers in her recent bankruptcy, McCarthy discovered at about the time of her husband’s death in 2003 that the couple had a $4,888 balance on a Providian Financial Corp. Visa card and another $2,020 balance on a Providian Mastercard.
Over the two years from 2002 until early 2004, when she filed for bankruptcy, McCarthy charged an additional $218 on the first card and made more than $3,000 in payments, the court papers show. But instead of her balance going down, finance charges