This is exactly the reason I put my four Credit Cards through a shredder five years ago.
I was rapidly becoming one of their "Slaves to the Cards" wich as this article points out last's a LIFETIME once the Cards are maxed out and the user is only able to pay the monthly minimum ammount. maxing out a Credit limit of 10 grand is all it takes for the average working person.
Another point here is,those who are maxed out can no longer USE the cards for the purpose intended,becuase they are only paying the monthly minimum payment wich doesn't open the Card's limit back up until a substantial ammount is paid off.
Debit Cards for convenience? YES becuase you only get the item you are purchasing if you can currently afford it with your Bank Accounts Cash Reserve.
Credit Cards? FORGET IT unless you want to become a Slave to Corporate America.

*laughing*

Thanks. You just reminded me to pay my credit card bill. :)

I've stopped using credit cards to pay any local vendors since it just sends money out of the community and into the hands of these blood-sucking financial companies. But I still use them to pay big corporations like Time-Warner about whom I don't care anyway, and to buy things online, for which, unfortunately the use of credit cards seem inescapable.

Usury is the historic term for charging interest on money lended. In many religions and by many great thinkers throughout the ages it has been condemned as an inherently immoral practice. read up on some of its history in the wikipedia listing:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury

I once had a credit card pulled from me by the company for "insufficient use".

I got it for emergencies..you know, a parent dies, need 15 grand for funeral type of emergency.

Well, the emergency never happened. I didn't keep the card with me, I kept it in my fireproof box. 2 years after getting the account and paying the measly monthly fee every month, I got the letter telling me they were going to close my line of credit. I suppose I wasn't generating enough debt to make it profitable.


What I cannot stand is the way the whole economy is BASED on personal credit..it's not just credit cards, but loans and debt. When I first came to the states, my credit was "insufficient". Not BAD...but no credit history at all. This made it remarkably hard to get an apartment...I had no history of fucking off with the rent or skipping out on a loan...I had no history whatsoever..I ALSO had no personal debt load, and was told that I SHOULD carry some debt if I want people to give me shit. Think about how stupid that is! You have to OWE someone else in order to even be considered? If I were a lender or landlord, I would pick the guy who doesn't owe anyone anything...he's either paid it all off or is damn smart with his money.

It's gotten to the point where people who try to buy cars outright get the cops called on them. And let's not forget that couple last year who was investigated by the HSA for the heinous and suspicious act of PAYING OFF THEIR CREDIT CARD.

Oh joy...

I never had a credit card, wise decision.

Keep those corporations at the biggest distance possible..

<Mike - Credit cards are absolutally NOT NEEDED for ANY "Online Purchases".
I have a "Visa Check Card"(Debit card) that can (and has!) been used identically as a Visa Credit Card globally! >

Jake - For me, it's not the credit card interest since I always pay the bills right away in full but it's the transaction fees that they extract from the vendors.

Credit card companies make as much or more on each transaction of a debit card, as that of a credit card.

That's usually between 3% and 4% of the bill going straight to the financial companies. (In addition, monthly fees are charged to the vendors by the merchant banks and credit card authenticators.) A local health food store, for example, may have an average margin of 25% on their items but when a customer uses their credit card -- bingo, they now only made 22% or less on the sale. That 2.5% to 4% could represent the difference between their expenses and their cost of goods, in order words, their entire net profit. Ouch! Higher margin business can handle the transaction fees better but either way, it raises the cost of doing business for those local vendors. Yet vendors are not allowed to charge more for credit card sales than cash sales.

Scott Stroud: Voters nailed by fine print should demand credit card reform

San Antonio Express-News
Web Posted: 12/15/2006 10:20 PM CST

One of the reasons you ought to be interested in politics showed up in my mailbox the other day. It was a credit card offer, and I bet you got one, too.
At the bottom of the page, beside an asterisk, it said: "We have the right to change your (annual percentage rates), fees and other terms at any time, for any reason including, but not limited to, any change in your credit history, credit obligations, Account performance, use of your credit lines with us or any creditor, or our financial return."

Which means, in English, that once you fill out the form and send it in, the card company can do whatever it wants at any time.

Which kind of takes the edge off the 0 percent introductory rate.

And what does this have to do with politics?

During the 2004 election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan campaign finance watchdog, finance and credit card companies gave more than $8.2 million to candidates, individually and through political action committees. A majority, 64 percent, went to Republicans, as might be expected with them in control of both the White House and Congress.

MBNA's employees and its PAC contributed more than $1.5 million during the cycle, including $354,000 to President Bush's re-election bid.

So it comes as no surprise that one of Congress' "accomplishments" in 2005 was federal bankruptcy reform, which made it harder for consumers to get a fresh start. President Bush signed the bill into law.

Such legislation had been sought by the credit card industry since 1984, according to Ronald Mann, a law professor at the University of Texas in Austin. The reform bill passed last year marked "a significant shift in favor of creditors," he wrote in a research paper published in September.

"Its most important effect will be to enable issuers to profit from debt servicing revenues paid by distressed borrowers who are not yet in bankruptcy," he wrote.

Mann, who also published a book this year about credit card law, said the reform bill did nothing to address the fine-print language included in credit card offers — or the fact that terms vary widely from offer to offer.

What he proposes is a standardized agreement like those you see in home mortgages, allowing credit card issuers to compete on a few variables but keeping the basic framework the same.

More remote, Mann said, are the prospects for legislation that protects consumers from such open-ended terms — legislation, say, that would prohibit banks from changing rates for no reason.

Of course, nobody is forced to obtain a credit card. And it's hard to argue with the idea that debt accrued should be repaid.

And yet Mann said that what the companies gained from making it harder to declare bankruptcy is marginal at best.

Would anyone sign a mortgage agreement on a house if the interest rate could be changed by the bank at any time? Of course not.

If people paid more attention to the political game between elections, maybe consumer-oriented credit card reform wouldn't be such a far-off prospect. Voters who exercise their power at election time should make it known that they want the same fair shake the credit card companies are getting.

Of course, we could choose instead to ignore politics until the next election — or we could walk around town all night with $20 bills taped to our shirts.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scott Stroud is the Express-News politics/government editor. E-mail him at jstroud@express-news.net

I am calling bullshit on this one. I say if you eat of the poisoned apple you deserve the stomach ache.

If you (who ever you are) have so little discipline that you are willing to rack up massive debt on the sole theory that you can not attenuate your lifestyle choices then you deserve the pain and suffering that accompanies it. Don't go expecting the larger society or the banks to bail you out. Don't expect to be treated like a two year old just because you have the mind of one.

I have dug myself out from deep credit card debt more than a few times (each time it hurt). I will not own a card other than my AMEX. Ya pay it off each month so you are obligated to keep track of your usage.
Some people have the discipline to do that with a regular charge card, God bless 'em if they can.
Anyone who does it any other way is a fool.

Oh HELP ME THE BANKERS FORCED ME TO BORROW MONEY




By Charles Sullivan (clearly a miserable worthless dog-fucking communist)
12/15/06 www.informationclearinghouse.info/a...tm


///////////The booming credit card business is one of the most profitable and destructive industries to ever emerge from the inventive capitalist mind./////////////
Ohh that evil capitalist mind. They force people to get revolving charge debt. AT GUN PONT TOO @!!!!!!

/////////// Obscene profits are realized without lifting a finger to perform any physical work.//////////

MUUUHH HA HA the bad nasty evil credit card companies who do no work. No they don’t they let you use their money to do what you want and you agree in writing to pay them back with interest. It’s your choice no one forces you to engage in a fool’s transaction.

////////// In 2004 a single credit card company—the MBNA—realized 1.5 times the profits of fast food industry giant McDonald’s.//////////

Yah so? If the idiots who are addicted to fast easy credit weren’t such a pack of miserable worthless losers maybe they’d be paying their own way as they go.

///////////Collecting on credit card debt is a very lucrative business. /////////
Yes it is indeed. Thank you, you miserable worthless losers who have too much credit debt and then all on your own turn yourselves into miserable worthless loser deadbeats too. Thank you very much. Idiots.

//////////////With origins in South Dakota, the modern credit card industry began realizing obscene profits as a result of deregulation./////////////

Oh it always so very obscene. Love the histrionic choice of words. This guy is nothing more than a filthy fucking communist.

////////// The Supreme Court also played a pivotal role in expanding banking industry profits by lifting limits to the amount of additional fees credit card companies could charge their customers.//////////////

Hey those losers choose all on their own few will to make a stupid deal. How is anyone’s fault but their own??

/////////////The sky is the limit now. Industry deregulation has resulted in the systemic fleecing of consumers by practices that can only be described as willful and predatory in nature.///////////


Ohh the poor helpless stupid ignorant illiterate consumers who need a nanny state to tell them how to manage their finances.

Do you really believe that people are this pathetic, this abysmally stupid, this hopelessly incapable of managing their own lives?? Do you? Are you one of them?

/*//////////////To date, credit card volume is running 11% percent higher than last year./////////

Either the idiots are out doing it again or there is more expendable capital.


////////////// By paying only the monthly minimum payments, as so many struggling families do, it may require more than thirty years to pay off a dress or a power tool that was purchased at the local mall on Black Friday.////////////

Pretty ugly isn’t it? Yes indeed so then if the person makes the minimum payment that person is a worthless fool a goddamned loser that person is so galacticly stupid that they don’t deserve to be anything other than a rodent in a cage cranking out interest payments for the bankers. People that stupid should not be allowed to breed.


*//////////// That makes for a pretty expensive gift and every year additional debt is accumulating upon the old, making extrication very difficult, if not impossible./////////

Well if John Doe wants to crawl into bed with the bankers on their terms then he gets what he deserves. He makes that deal all on his own.

///////////But that is the whole idea behind predatory capitalism.//////////
So what? It might be and it might not be. So what? It might be bad it the bankers the lenders managed to force you onto the credit card treadmill but they don’t they can’t, they merely make it available. You (whoever you are) can choose to use it or choose to abuse it or not use it at all. Your choice pallie.


///////////////// Industry insiders refer to the small percentage of card holders who do not carry a monthly balance as ‘dead beats.’////////////

Gee I am an industry insider. I don’t call them that. What those people are doing is taking advantage of the bankers. They are using the bankers and playing the game to their own advantage. Those are the smart people.
//////////// Consumer traps are engineered into the system that all but guarantees that card uses will be late making their payments or exceed their credit limits.//////////

Traps is it? What trap is that?? Do they disguise the payment date?

//////////When card users are late making payments, as the complex algorithms used by card issuers predict they will, interest rates rise dramatically and multiple user fees are added to the monthly bill. //////////

Yah horrible isn’t it??? Can you believe that there are people so fucking stupid that they will let themselves fall into this and then cry fowl and claim that it’s not their fault??

////////////Millions of card users spend most of their income paying exorbitant user fees, without reducing the balance or reducing it only minimally//////////

It’s the deal they chose to make because they wanted to.

///////// The bankers are raking in billions, while working class families are becoming debt slaves to the predatory capitalists of the credit card industry.///////////////

Who gives a rat’s ass? Those middle class families chose to do it.
Maybe those people should blame themselves instead of hanging their so called families out to dry as a pathetic lame assed excuse for their own stupidity,.

What kind of person chooses to bury their family in debt and then insists that they can use the word “family” as a talisman as if the mere use of the world entitles them to a break?? What disgusting dog-fucking asshole holds their children in front of them as a shield to take the heat for that person’s stupid choices??


///////// This was made possible with the blessings of Congress operating under the influence of the corporate lobbyists that swarm on Capitol Hill like maggots on a corpse. ///////
Ohhh those bad congressmen. They actually allowed people to make free choices !!! How horrible.
Wait a minute!!!!! Congress is supposed to micro manage your lives because you are too fucking stupid to do it yourself??
No that is worse than stupid it nanny state and Joseph Stalin on steroids in bed together.



///////////Bankruptcy laws that once provided working people a way out of debt are no longer available to them as an avenue of escape./////////

That is a fucking howling lie. Bankruptcy laws have been changed to prevent abuse.
UNDER THE NEW LAWS: If you have a debt and you attempt to negotiate with your creditor they have to negotiate with you. If you offer 69% on the dollar and they don’t take it that debt may be wiped out in the Bankruptcy proceedings. Under the new laws both the debtor and the creditor have burdens to bear.


//////////// It should be noted, however, that bankruptcy courts remain open to corporations and provide them with debt relief, a chance to start over with a clean slate./////////

Another fucking mis-statement with deliberate intent to mislead.. Corporate BK is way tougher than private BK.

//////////Thus the banker thieves will continue to rob working families until death do them part; and then the debt burden is passed on to the next of kin.///////////
Another howling fucking god dammed lie.
DEBT IS NOT INHERITABLE. You can not pass a debt on to your survivors.
That practice ended in old England when ships had only sail power. It has never – never – not ever been the practice in the united States.

In fact there is only one way for you to pass debt on. The survivor must agree in writing to pay the debt and must receive valid consideration in exchange for the promise.


//////// More than a cash cow designed to bilk the people of their hard earned income, credit card debt is also a way to control the debtors and keep them in line; and it is a major battle front in the class war that rages across the continent. /////////////
That statement is not apropos of anything. It’s merely ugly words inserted in the middle of this pointless tirade.


////////////Like genetically modified poultry with abnormally large breasts, the American consumer is bred to consume and to be consumed by predatory capitalists.////////

Genetically modified poultry?? And this drooling moron wants to be taken seriously?? What a n asshole this Sullivan is.

///////// They are taken in by seductive advertising campaigns that nourish the urge to consume, no matter how destructive to the self or to the planet. //////////

Ohh “seductive advertising” Ohh how painfully stupid people must be. It nourishes the urge to consume Ohh how horrible HELP I AM HELPLESS IN THE GRIPS OF SEDUCTIVE ADVERTISING.

If there were anything to this pile of snake shit then the Advertising should be regulated not the consumer’s choices.
//////////////Credit card agreements are so complex and deliberately misleading that few consumers, or even lawyers can fully comprehend them;/////////////
No they are not !! The Fed has closely regulated how card contracts may be written, Interest rates even default rates are all right up front in open wording with nothing complex or hidden.

////////////// and they are mined with hidden traps and pitfalls guaranteed to produce lifetimes of debt./////////////////
Again – Not they are Not. That is illegal. If any one credit card company did that the plaintiff’s bar would be all over it like white on rice because the money from a class action never makes it to the consumers it makes it to the law firm.

////////////From the previously cited statistics//////////////
There was not one single bit of statistic data cited. Not one fact - nothing. It was all rhetoric. Sullivan is a lying piece of dog shit. His mother is a pile of dog shit.

//////// it should be clear that the people stand naked and vulnerable before the predatory capitalists and their cohorts in government.//////////

Ohh the poor people who want a 36” flat panel TV. Oh the pathetic people who make a deal and then squeal that it’s not fair.


/////////// Massive personal debt is yet another example of a profit driven system that does not work for the working people of this nation.///////////
Maybe. Then why to they rush in to do it like morons?

///////// The trust that should prosper between people and government no longer exists, leaving the majority of citizens without representation.////////

So then if Government were doing the right thing it would remove choices from the people because the people are too fucking stupid to look out for their own affairs??
Sullivan is a motherfucking god dammed dog fucking commie.


/////////// Predatory capitalism creates enormous wealth for a privileged few by exploiting workers who are trying to survive by working multiple jobs that yield non-living wages, and few or no benefits.//////////////
Ohh the poor pathetic idiots. Those poor bastards who refuse to take responsibility for themselves. We need laws and rules to impact everyone just so those few morons won’t have a bad day because of their own choices.

Ya know if EVERYONE were so stupid so bad off as this Sullivan guy thinks then Everyone would be Bankrupt.


////////////Virtually all of the financial institutions in this country, including the Federal Reserve, are arrayed against working families.//////////////
Mnnnn Nope. They are in business to make a profit. Sullivan thinks that profit is evil. That is his problem, he is a fucking commie.


////////Congress is working for big business rather than working families, as evidenced by their policy decisions and voting records./////////

Because they allow free choice? Or because the US Constitution won’t let them remove free choice?

//////////Ever more creative methods of fleecing the people are being crafted in the corporate board rooms of America and dutifully written into law by Congress./////////
And they go to the meetings in those secret CIA silent black helicopters too.



///////// Millions of working people thus find themselves buried under an avalanche of debt from [THEIR OWN STUPIDITY] ////////////

////////// Debtors are a cash cow for the credit card and banking industries whose supply of milk is without end./////////
Only if they want to be. It’s their choice. If you want to use the banker’s money, you have to dance to the Banker’s tune. But you don’t have to use their money.


////////Eventually we will be required to work until we die,////////
Ohh poor baby. Will that happen to you soon please??

********The low esteem by which workers are held in America by the ruling Plutocracy underscores the reality that there is no one looking out for our interests.///////

More stupid rhetoric

///////// But we must remember that we comprise about 95% of the population.////////
Wni is this “we.” Is Sullivan really stupid enough to think he an American?? He is a fucking Commie.

///////// Our low placement on the economic rungs of the ladder assures that we will remain bottom feeders,//////////
So Sullivan is telling EVERYONE (including those on this tribe) that you are all bottom feeders??? Nice guy this Sullivan.