$700,000,000,000.00 and Counting

While we are all gritting out teeth and accepting the inevitable bailout of unregulated banking in the mortgage sector, the credit card sector is still completely unregulated. Congress is trying to address that in separate legislation at the same time they are proceeding with the bailout by writing some pretty tame limits on how credit card issuers deal with consumers. Mostly the legislation is about notification. It has no caps on interest or fees charged, just on how much time the lenders give you. And guess what. The banking industry is pushing back, saying this time of crisis (that their own desire to conduct business unfettered created) is no time to make it harder for consumers to get credit. And by extension, for lenders to continue to make the obscene profits they have been raking in ever since the Supreme Court overturned all the state-level laws controlling interest rates and penalty fees, leaving them free to charge as much as they can bleed from desperate, bad risk consumers. They hang their heads and accept that the free lunch is over in mortgages, but don't see why they should have to put up with consumer protections on credit card debt. After all, if the situation gets too rough, the government can just bail them out again.