I just read something about Obama pledging protections for credit card users. I find this at odds with his call for personal responsibility. I am tired of credit card companies being demonized and consumers being canonized. When you buy something with a credit card, you are using someone else's money to pay for what you buy. You are agreeing to pay them back when the bill comes. When you don't, it is theft. Everyone else acted in good faith, you received goods and/or services, your credit card company gave the retailer money and even charged them a transaction fee for the privilege of doing business with you through them. If you know you don't have the money and won't have it when the bill comes, you are knowingly defrauding people.
I can't speak to how and why these things happen. Many of the stories behind the debt are heart wrenching tales of accident/injury/illness exacerbated by a loss of income and a struggle to maintain the life they have built. Many are also just irresponsible spending and a failure to manage their income and expenditure ratio. But I really disagree with what appears to be an economy driven pandering to take care of people who aren't taking care of themselves. I don't believe that is the federal government's job. Kudos to Ben Feller, AP for at least noting: "The president made no mention of the responsibility of consumers to keep themselves from getting overextended."
2 comments:
I completely agree with you about consumers' responsibility not to get into debt. People might not like to hear it, but let's face it, it was part of what got into this mess in the first place. Not the behaviour of "greedy bankers" or "shark-like hedge-fund managers" (although obviously they helped), but we, the people, have to take some responsibility for what's happened re the credit crunch.
Hell no ... What he is talking about is the practice of gouging folks with outrageous transaction fee's, spiking interest rates, double billing, etc. The fee's and practices that credit cards use are not even allowed by MOST states - therefore you find most of these credit card companies headquartering out of the few states that DO allow it. My own home state in particular - back in the late 70's/early 80s our then-govenor (now convicted of manslaughter) dropped the cap on interest rates in order to get CitiBank to come here - and in essence, bringing jobs - but at what cost? When is enough, enough? Gouging credit customers, outrageous executive pay, sending jobs oversea's ... we are cannibalizing our own citizens in the name of greed. And, yes, personal responsibility is a must... and American's need to stop using credit for nearly everything.
Check out this article... http://military.bankrate.com/brm/news/cc/20020320a.asp
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