I owe, I owe, it’s those credit cards you know!

I must get 3 or 4 offers a day for some sort of credit card. Most of them joyfully announce, “I’ve been pre approved for
a limit of up to $100,000.00”. I have a special file for all this junk It is a beautiful plastic lined metal receptacle that is so important to me that it sits under my desk so I may regularly file “important” papers in it.

Remember a few years ago when credit card interest rates used to be somehow associated with whatever the prime lending rate was? Then Ray Gun Ronnie became president and all the sudden we had 21% interest rates. Credit Card companies jumped on the bandwagon to end their practice of tying their interest rates to the prime rate so when the prime lending rate dropped they could leave their interest rates at the higher 18% to 21%.

I’ve been studying this mess and after a little simple math some pretty scary things become apparent. First is that if you just
pay the minimum amount due each month then you’ll still be paying off your credit card when you die. The second is that the $100.00 dinner you treated your mother-in-law to will end up costing you somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000.00. (And your mother-in-law says you have no respect for her). Then during all this troublesome math something equally
upsetting occurred to me.

The governments prime rate is down below 2% yet the credit card companies haven’t dropped their interest rates one tiny bit. Not even a little. Here we are in the middle of a recession which was fueled first by a stupid remark from our now commander in thief then accelerated by an act of terrorism. A national state of emergency is upon us. Our country is at war and thousands of people are loosing their jobs. Has your interest on your credit card dropped at all? It hasn’t because the major credit card companies are going to purposely suck the life’s blood out of everyone and everything they can despite the fact that we are in the middle of a national emergency.

Now granted my IQ and that of BartCop would probably not combine to add up to that of the average mental institution resident but it seems to me this is something called “price gouging” or as it is described in the laws of some states ''unconscionable'' transactions. In other words unconscionable pricing of goods or services during times of emergency.

By refusing to lower credit card interest rates when prime rates are this low the credit card companies are purposely trying
to make extra profit during difficult times at the expense of the American people, another good definition for “price gouging”.
Of course the large banks which own these institutions of financial prostitution contribute considerable more to political campaigns than do individual consumers so you can take a wild guess at how long before this problem will be corrected
or anyone will be prosecuted for price gouging the American public in time of national emergency.

All this going on at a time when according to statistics the average person is carrying a larger debt load and being encouraged to do so by the government in order to help jump start the economy. If this isn’t true then why did all those rich people get $600.00 dollar rebates so they could spend the money and help the economy? Spend, spend, spend to save your neighbors job is the order of the day. If you don’t have the cash then just charge. All this plus now, as I seem to recall a change in the
law, you can’t get rid of credit card debt through bankruptcy court. Are you mad as hell yet? You should be, guess who greased the political wheels to get that little change in the law passed? The very same financial institutions that are guilty
of price gouging with interest rates during this time of national crisis and war.

Now let’s really make this fun by applying a little common sense. Banks and other financial institutions make money when the economy is running strong. IE, the Clinton years. They tend to go broke during hard times or recession IE. The Reagan years. I’m not so young that I don’t remember all the banks that went broke during the eighties yet the fools that run the nations banks are doing some of the exact same things with credit card rates that they did with interest rates during the eighties. It caused tremendous damage to the US economy during the eighties and now we’re looking at them doing the same thing again.
Except now we’re dealing with an economy that has obviously gone global and we’ve got the same morons running the show. It just seems to me that they intend to drag the whole world down in the name of excessive profits and it makes me mad as hell. I have now paid off every credit card I have and I have cut them up. I’m going to get even with all those money grubbing SOB’s. I’m going to start using something called CASH for all my purchases. Screw the credit cards and screw the banking whores that are driving our world economy into ruin. 21%, 18%, even 12% interest rates are nothing short or criminal in today’s economic environment and it is time “we the people” demand that something be done about it. Let them know we’re mad as hell about it and we’re not going to take anymore by taking time to write your nearest elected official and mention to them that your vote rides on what action they decide to take. In the meantime don’t be stupid, cut up that piece of evil plastic your’re carrying around and get out of debt. That will show those assholes.

Are you mad as hell and tired of “taking it”?

I’d love to hear about it.

Write me at downingc@swbell.net