Credit Card Reform: IT's the Usury Limit, STUPID...

Howdy.

Representative Carolyn Maloney was on Brian Lehrer's show Friday (listen to it here )
A link to the PDF of her bill is HERE.

COMMENTS:

1) It's the ECONOMY stupid(*). We need to eliminate USURY. Very simple to understand. The Supreme Court said it was ok (in 1978). We need to have a law from CONGRESS to override this. (and I mentioned this in comment # 2, # 5, #19, and #33, and most of all #39)
For Representative Maloney to say it isn't appropriate to legislate this, is just showing how little she knows or has researched this situation.

We have had a Financial Tsunami. The ABSOLUTE start of this overwhelming problem came from these lawsuits in 1978. Ever since then the ETHICS and obligations of the banking industry has become less and less responsible.

It is the RESPONSIBILITY and the OBLIGATION of Congress to OVER-RULE the Supreme Court in order to specifically undo (any) ruling of the court.

We need to start to lobby Ms. Maloney and her committee, to make sure that she knows that a law reinstating USURY must be part of THIS.
14 minutes into this segment, she says she thinks that the states need to have the flexibility to change rates.

I say the financial crisis we are NOW living through is proof enough that we can NO longer let the banks run the state legislatures through their campaign donations.

We have had thirty-four years of campaign donation afflicted state regulations of banking laws. Where has this led us? To the collective poorhouse as a country.

Where will we be if a nationwide ban on Usury is NOT re-established? Just where we are today.
Where COULD we be if this was part of the discussion? Past here.

2) The Second and final criticism of this bill is it does NOT specifically have an OUTRIGHT ban on the practice of 'universal default'. (This is the practice of raising ALL of your credit card interest rates if you even miss a payment on a utility bill).


On a final point: I wonder why no one is starting to realize that campaign contributions cause so much of the problems in our country, including finance. I wonder if Ms. Maloney would care to comment on how her campaign contributions affected this issue.

Oh, and for those who say banks should be allowed to charge what they want. We now own them. We should be able to at least suggest some nice ethical reforms.

Ms. Maloney (and Brian)... Please revisit this CRITICAL issue, and come CLEAN.

Who are your political contributors, and why won't you put in the language to over-rule the supreme court's 1978 decision.

It should be explicitly stated as part of the law that that supreme court ruling of 1978 is PART of this bill, and will EXPLICITLY limit interest rates as a matter of NATIONAL policy.

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(*) stupid as in..., remembering all those campaigns of it's the economy stupid!)