Credit Card Racket: What's in Your Wallet?

Several years ago I contacted one of my credit cards.  After navigating the automated voice tree, I found out that to make a phone payment, I would be assessed a fee!  I hung up and wrote a check, grumbling that as a small business owner myself, I would never think of charging clients a fee to pay me!

Then, of course, like millions of Americans, I have received a letter from my credit card company (one of the recipients of TARP money, by the way) telling me my interest rate is going up.  No reason other than they are suffering from the economy.  So apparently they need to make even more money on the spread of the no-interest loans from my taxpaying dollars.  I just got stung twice.

So it is great to read that President Obama is convening a sit down with the heads of the major credit card companies on Thursday to talk them out of their most egregious acts like charging to make a payment, unilaterally raising rates, charging interest on fees, giving virtually no time between billing and due dates...the list goes on.

But there are even worse issues.  Our country, our culture, has become so addicted to credit cards that we capitulate to a corrupt system.  Companies like Equifax and other credit rating monopolies tell us that unless we have credit and use it, our credit ratings decline.  If we have closed accounts our credit ratings go down.  It's disgusting symbiotic relationship.  If you want to live without credit, you seemingly do not exist to the very companies that can decide the interest rates you get on home loans.  The most responsible among us are punished.  Does that make sense?

Or how about small businesses, unable to get business loans from a lender are forced into using high interest credit cards from the same lender who turned them down for a more reasonable loan? Who makes the money?

It's great that Obama is going to cajole the credit card executives.  We'll see the photo-op, and the executives in their gorgeous suits standing in front of the White House proclaiming they will work with the Administration.  And minutes later, out of the camera's eye, they will be meeting with their K Street lobbyists figuring out how to kabash the proposed legislation on Capital Hill which would begin requiring the companies to behave in slightly less disgusting manner.  

But like a monopoly, or like a Mafia mob, the tentacles of the credit card companies (which are mostly owned by the "too big to fail banks) are intertwined into our culture, our "way of life," and into all of the policy makers pockets.  Unravelling their power will be long, difficult, but rewarding work.  

Time not paying credit card bills?  Priceless!