is regarding credit card companies. Mr. Obama has called for legislation by the end of the month that promises sweeping changes in an effort to full fill another promise that he promised to get done in the first 100 days. That was major "revamping" of the credit card system. Does anyone know what these changes are supposed to be. I for one would be happy with a freeze on card rates. What I mean is if you charge something to your card and at the time your rate is 4.9%....it remains that until you pay the money back....none of this crap of raising your rate to 29.9% because the payment got there one day late. Currently we get charged a late fee and then a nice little kick in the a$$ in interest for a while which amounts to robbery if you ask me. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090509/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_credit_cards_10 Does anyone remember what the campaign promises were???
I am not 100 percent sure but I think 2 things was promised: 1. Credit card cannot raise interest rates if we are late paying other bills. Currently, they can raise our interest rates if we are late paying something like cable bill... 2. Putting a ceiling limit on interest rates. Again, I am not 100 percent sure...
I tried googling it and I got basically nothing........which doesn't surprise me....kind of coincides with whats being done to change things.....nothing I hope he can make this a meaningful thing!!!!
Obama is overstepping his boundaries on a lot of issues, IMO. a little bit of regulation here and there is just fine, but he's going around and trying to control just about everything. FYI capitalism is on it's way out in this country. i did vote for him, but i'm very much regretting it now. He promised change. and boy, is he ever delivering! he's actually done a lot - but the thing is you just don't see it. it's getting masked and euphemized so you don't know what's going on.
Unfortunately, with now complete and total control in his hands, we have only seen the tip of the Ice-berg.... Pretty much every indication spells a very rough line in American history, and I think its getting worse by the day.
agreed. and to answer the OP's question, i think they're still trying to hammer out details as to what the regulations will be. the genesis of the regulation in the first place is to try and stimulate lending to the general public. here's the thing: recently we had that credit meltdown. the government wanted to keep the banks afloat & stimulate the economy by using the TARP program, giving free money to banks. So banks get money at 0.0% and get to lend it at 5%,18%,25% or whatever rates your loan/credit card are. Thing is, banks don't lend with reckless abandon anymore since they almost went under doing that. Banks are starting to lend responsibly. which is what they should do. the government can help liquidity; they can't make the banks lend. if a customer is not credit-worthy, it should be up to the banks to decide that, not the government. the downside is that those of us who are credit-worthy are also paying, but the idea Obama has here will not fix anything. On the surface, to the person who doesn't read anything into the story, it appears a good thing. If you think about it for more than 10 seconds, it doesn't make sense. Joe Plumber might think his 18% credit card rate is ridiculous; but maybe he should have thought about that before being delinquent on that card a couple of years ago. rates are based on your creditworthiness. the government messing with this is just a form of socialism. i swear, capitalism is dying under this presidency. no more survival of the fittest, the market determining whether a company is viable or not, etc..... now our government decides everything.
So, you are saying Capitalism is giving away to Socialism? NOOOO WAY. Who'da thunkit was gonna go this way with Obama at the helm
haha, well not socialism in the strict sense... but he's taking away capitalistic functions from our economy.
its been more of an adjustment to neoliberal policies enacted in the 70s that led to us being a debtor nation instead of a creditor nation we used to be. we have spend tons of money but not into areas where we reap rewards for our investment. it has been directed toward the military(wastefully)/defense, big pharms, and big agriculture(both of which are tied to biomedical industry). He was elected by the financial industry to correct the mistakes they themselves made, essentially.
actually that's not correct. majority of the financial industry was behind McCain - not because he was a better candidate, but because he wasn't spewing anti-capitalist stuff that Obama was. the loudest people might have supported Obama, but the numbers on the exit polls showed mccain had a heavy hand in our industry. McCain, a republican, who was for corporate tax breaks & being more lenient on financial industry; versus Obama, who is talking about giving tax breaks to the poor, increasing capital gains tax, etc... which do you think had the wall street vote? i voted for Obama for a mulititude of reasons, and we don't need to get into that here. let's just say i was less sold on Obama as much as i was not sold on McCain. McCain addressed the financials for me to a point that i was comfortable - wasn't ok with a lot of his other policies though. Obama - i very much didn't care for his economic ideas/policies, but i didn't expect him to do so much bad. every single move he's made thus far for our economy has either hurt us more in the long run, or just swept it under the rug. good thing for him is he is fortunate that most of his fanbase/constituents don't even see what he's doing. in the eyes of many, he's still infallible. if his loud supporters took the time to see what he's actually doing, they'd probably make a stink or at the very least stop supporting him so loudly.
Obama was Wall Street's candidate http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/us/politics/04disclose.html?ref=business www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/28/obama-finance-chair-linke_n_88884.html www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/17/AR2007041701688.html www.uk.reuters.com/article/stocksNews/idUKNOA53525520080605
Have we moved much further in that direction then the road the Reps sent us down under Bush? Not really.
i appreciate the links - but honestly it wasn't the majority. obviously it wasn't unanimous, either - there are people voting for both sides in every industry. even the UAW, which so strongly supported Obama as a whole, had members that voted for McCain. my point is the majority of the industry (in numbers) supported McCain. If you looked at their proposed economic policies pre-election, the proof is in the pudding. in other news, i'm wondering what your point is actually, yes. i don't like Bush & definitely am NOT a Bush supporter; but to his credit, he didn't meddle in affairs he had no business meddling in as much as Obama is currently doing. I've counted 5 major policies thus far into Obama's presidency that are major interferences with the capitalist structure; 3 of which are steps toward a socialist economy. If you think that's better than Bush, then maybe we should make it official and just remove the democracy part too? (purposeful sarcasm there, no offense meant ).
that's cool. can you explain exactly how that works? voting to make everything equal? but seriously, i appreciate the intentions of some aspects of socialism - i really do. but the fact is that is the enemy of capitalism, which rewards those who make wise decisions & earn what they make. this country was built on that, and we're in danger of losing a lot of that capitalist structure. does the term laissez-faire mean anything to anyone? and to you sir, just keeping it clean.
Try Carolyn Maloney, she sponsored the bill and Ed Mills her liaison wrote a good bit of it...just a thought.....
saw another discussion on this on CNBC the other day and a different angle was brought up - that Obama was hoping this would convince people to use credit less & cash more. I guess i can see the spirit of that, but it's still ultimately unreasonable. Another person on CNBC countered with this argument: "Some people with big SUV's aren't going to carry $100 in the wallet in cash - they'll still buy gas at the pump with their credit card. this has nothing to do with managing money properly, it is just convenience."
Exactly. With the cards I use, I get a 1-5% deduction from the following month's bill, they are always paid on time, no annual fees, so I just don't use cash anymore. About the only thing I don't pay with plastic is my quarterly taxes, and that's only because you have to use some sort of agent that charges a fee to do it.