Credit Cards are Killing Us: Their fault or ours? (Me: THEIRS!)

Are credit cards just plain sick & wrong?

Well, if you’re little ol’ opinionated me, it’s easy to offer a resounding “HELL YES!”, but what about proof?  Well, there is that well-known Frontline Episode that shows how thoroughly and deliberately credit card companies are delivering the screwage to middle-income America … But, the popular reasoning goes, if what they’re doing is wrong, surely it’s illegal?  And since nobody’s suing them for it, it must be technically alright, however shady-seeming, right? 

(We Americans are SO quick to forget that human beings write the laws, and the public can change them any time we darn well want to.  Banning black people from using a public restroom used to be “technically legal” too, now, didn’t it?)

Enter what is sure to be my favorite article today:  A Scienceblog piece on the research of Adam Goldstein, writing for the University of Illinois Law Review, seriously considering whether the way credit cards operate may violate product liability standards — in other words, some very smart people are now thinking hard about whether what banks are doing to consumers with credit cards is illegal.  The piece explains that the National Bank Act of 1864 gave special exemptions to national banks when it came to consumer-protection laws and interest rate limitations (as well as other things) — an exemption which may have had a reasonable purpose in the 19th century, but which is causing social havoc now.

Go get ‘em, boys.  Contact me for volunteer help anytime.  This is a case of what is obviously criminal having been allowed to go on way too long.

-PD