December 16, 2008
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News: Why the New CC Regulations?
Historical precedents will be the necessary rule for the near future. Never has our country endured such extreme corruption from within till now, when we have to admit that the honor system, by itself, is no longer working. Contrary to Mr.'s McCain's campaign, extreme deregulation is very detrimental to the health of our nation. So many areas have swayed to selfish intent that now, even the guilty need the help of government intervention. With Bush still promoting the ills he has fostered, by opening another loophole for corrupt CEO's to ‘take the money and run', curbing the mal-intent still remains a threat. But the credit card industry is different. The credit card industry has been a relatively good citizen for all these years but has grown so large that it's clientele have become segmented into statistical groups. A necessary path for such a large industry. Unfortunately, this creates a problem for ‘the little guys'. Individually, over 60,000 of these ‘little guys' have taken the time to write letters seeking relief from the Fed. Most of the letters were about problems with the credit card industry's way of doing things.
For years, the republican majority had locked in the ‘hands-off' policy to such an extreme that individual Americans were locked into the mercy of industry (which doesn't compute well on the balance sheet). As the Democrats eventually gained the effectiveness of numbers, they sought to reverse this disastrous pathway and began passing measures to slow down the destruction. A year ago they passed legislation against the mortgage industry, prohibiting some of the dangerous practices leading up to the melt-down. But, alas, too little, too late. Now, Congress is pressuring our central bank to get involved in areas they have been neglecting for years. One of them is the credit card market. The Fed is now drawing up plans with the assistance of the well-respected founder of Consumer Federation of America, Allen Fishbein, in forming some guidelines to help the credit card industry serve their customers better.