Usury 101

I dunno -- why should it be easy to borrow money and pretend like it was yours for 5 years?

Why do people have such bad credit that they can only get a credit card that charges 40%?? :P

I think these people are irresponsible enough they should just not get any more credit cards?

Did you read the article?

The point is that you could be late with one payment on one card and all of your cards could raise the rates arbitrarily.

And how will that every help anyone pay off their cards.

Woah woah woah Kearns, when did I become a republican and you a democrat? The Credit Card companies have the right to arbitrarily raise rates, especially when it is based on a missed payment. It becomes about balancing risk. CC Companies have a risk that they take on by lending money. If you are not responsible with your money and do not pay it back, their money is not lost. To disourage you from spending too much and increasing their risk by too much, they put penalties of higher interest rates on your card in order to protect their risk. This will have a negative impact on you, so hoping that you are resonably responsible, they blancing things out.

Eveyrone says "So if you miss JUST one payment..." Well yeah, you missed a payment, thats not cool. That's like complaining that you go to jail because you killed JUST one person. Granted, this is an extreme comparison, but consequences are still the consequences. If you can't handle it, then don't miss payments, and if you can't handle that, then don't use credit.

I think you missed the point where it was missed a payment on a different card. Like if you rented movies from Hollywood Video and Blockbuster, and returned the Blockbuster movie a day late so Hollywood charged an addition $20 on their late fee...

No no, I got the point, and I think your scenario with video rental is perfectly fair, keep late fees low (even though this whole thing is moot because Blockbuster no longer charges late fees) for the general public and charge higher late fees on the people who have proven themselves to be a high rental risk. The thing is, there is a whole nationwide thing setup for credit cards with the credit score system, there just isn't a rental score system yet. But I do get the point of the article, and I feel like it is just saying "People shouldn't be held responsible accross the board."

I think it is saying that the system has been allowed to get out of hand, to the point where it is so confusing, and the penalties so high, that we are forcing (allowing) people to go bankrupt on a regular basis, which just ends up costing the rest of us, and like a house of cards it will all come to a bad end.

"and like a house of cards it will all come to a bad end"

Woah woah woah Kearns, I think you mean "like a Jenga tower it will all come tumbling down."

Now that you mention it, Jenga does allways come tumbling down... What a rip off...