Sealy suggests:
And maybe we have them in check now that Obama is in office. But what about when Jeb Bush wins in 2016? Then the bankers will run wild again?
You think that Obama has the bankers
in check?!
Consider that right now banks are borrowing money at
ZERO PERCENT INTEREST and loaning it to us at 5-5.5% for motgages and the sky's the limit on credit cards.
You call
THAT keeping them in check?
Obama is ENABLING THEM to rip off this nation, amigo.
They get free money, they get bailouts in the trillions, they have no limit to how much they can charge us to borrow money they got from the government, they're making money hand over fist and you think OBAMA is
your friend?!
I hate to break this to you, Sealy because I like you, but your partisanship is blinding you to the shamocracy you really live in
You never answered me yesterday:
Please tell me who's side you are on here:
His panel led the way Tuesday by narrowly voting to send the full Senate a bill that would ban some of the many reasons credit card issuers raise interest rates and fees on consumers, raising the hackles of industry advocates who say such limits would ultimately cost consumers more money.
"Making this credit available is a very risky business and the committee's action today will unfortunately make it harder, not easier, for banks to continue doing so," said American Bankers Association's Kenneth J. Clayton.
The answer, according to some Republicans, is prosecuting predatory lenders and requiring issuers to more fully disclose agreements in language that consumers can easily understand. They point out that new rules by the Federal Reserve, designed to accomplish some of the same goals, take effect next year without punishing an industry suffering from the recession or putting credit out of reach for higher-risk borrowers.
"This legislation will take us back to an era when competition was limited, working families who needed help were denied access to credit cards and everyone paid interest rates one-third higher than today's, regardless of whether they paid their bills on time," said Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas, the top Republican on a House subcommittee that takes up the issue Wednesday.
Democrats rattle off examples of some in the industry that have exploited the needy: The college student or elderly consumer who was offered and accepted lines of credit they plainly could not afford; the economically viable consumer stunned by bigger-than-expected monthly payments, inflated under an obscurely written agreement or for hard-to-understand reasons.
"Disclosure is no longer enough. The credit card industry has found ways around disclosure," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. "No average consumer can hope to keep up with all the changes that have been made."
"We should not, however, legislate by anecdote," warned Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala. Dodd's bill -- similar to the House measure to be considered Wednesday -- would force the industry to comply this year with some of the same rules approved by the Fed now slated to take effect in 2010.
Dodd's proposal, approved by the panel 12-11 on Tuesday, would bar so-called double-cycle billing, when a card issuer computes interest charges on outstanding balances from more than one billing cycle. It also would ban "universal default," the practice of raising a cardholder's interest rates when that consumer has problems paying other creditors. And it would prevent card issuers from changing the terms of a contract as long as the card holder pays on time.
Shelby said he supports some of those goals. But he voted against the bill, as did every other Republican on the panel, in part because he said it would prohibit card issuers from pricing according to an existing card holder's past and potential behavior.
That, Shelby said, would amount to abandoning risk-based pricing altogether.
Dems _____
GOP_______
I think this is a great sample story of how the two parties are different.
And why do the AFL-CIO and all other labor unions all back the Democrats?
Clearly the Dems are the party looking out for labor/middle class.
Maybe not as much as you and I would like, but more than the GOP for sure.