Saturday, February 09, 2008

Predatory Nation: Credit Card Issuers Face The Music

Chaos has previously referred to a favorite meme (ok, Chaos came up with this one) as Predatory Nation: to wit, that the large corporations and institutions in this nation have evolved into simply trying to take advantage of the unwary citizenry. Here's a fine example (actually, the credit card industry itself is a perfect example) by way of the nation's paper of record. Money quote:
"Ronald J. Mann, a law professor at Columbia University and a credit expert, describes credit industry practices as intended to enslave borrowers in a 'sweat box.'"
In an interesting twist, consumers who seek to settle their debts have been further preyed upon by unscrupulous "debt relief" services, who sometimes advise them to suspend payments to creditors and save the funds for future lump sum payments (the disastrousness of this course of action should be apparent to the financially literate...). So, in essence, we have predators springing up from predators.
Just a brief example, and of course Chaos will continue to point these out.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Some credit card issuers are definitely worse than others! We'd love to get your feedback. We recently started a poll on the Best & Worst Credit Card Issuers. Feel free to stop by and give us your opinion.

Chaos said...

funny...they all want your money, and only differ in the degree of ruthlessness used to get it.