I am so mad I could spit. I have never been late on a payment, I have perfect credit, WTF 36%?

If they are doing that to someone like me, what are they doing to people who missed a payment?

I called up and cancelled the card, but I am still way pissed off. Didn’t we just bail those people out?

This is particularly well-timed in my case. Particularly:

The bill focuses on unfair trade practices, an underdeveloped area of law. A simple example is the right of credit card issuers to change interest rates whenever they want to, for no reason. This disgusting practice is a significant contributor to bank profits. Treasury people give the example of banks cheating customers by automatically enrolling them in overdraft protection programs, then manipulating the rules to increase fees. This will certainly be stopped by new regulations, unless the bank regulators persuade the new agency under this provision, which I would prefer to be a bit weaker:

Just today, I was checking my banking online.

In account A, I have ‘a bunch of money’.
Now that my bank is a Superbank, I assume that they are ‘leveraging’ against the money in that account, while paying me less than nickels for using it as ‘capital’ for whatever exotic finance schemes their other divisions are perpetrating.
I don’t ever use a debit card for that account.
I have no fees for that account.

In account B, I started using a debit card. I thought that it would be convenient: make my purchases, see the total, move money at the end of the day, and get an up-to-date account balance the next morning.
Silly me!
It appears that they dinged me fees for what I bought at 10 am and 2 pm, before I moved the money into the account at 4 pm.
Bastards.
I told my spouse an hour ago, ‘That’s it. I’m done. Cash will be simpler (even if I hate carrying cash!). And I won’t have to deal with the disgust at being charged to use my own money for account B (!)’.

Also, just saw this preview for an upcoming PBS/NYT Frontline program on credit cards. It appears that pbs and NYT are working together on this one, set to air in late November.

Also, last week on “Morning Meeting”, Dylan Ratigan (the host) interviewed Sen Maria Cantwell (my senator from Washington State) about financial reform. Late in the interview, Cantwell mentioned Dorgan, Levin, and Feinstein’s interest in finance reform.

It’s interesting to me that Feinstein is on Senate Intel, and that Levin is on Armed Services; I’m completely in agreement with DNI Dennis Blair that US national debt is a security issue. How this nation can claim to be working on ‘national security’ while the bank system leaks like an old, broken sieve and the banksters and insurance companies can still write and sell ‘swaps’ while leveraging at 30:1 is sheer lunacy.

Article about an earlier interview two weeks ago with Cantwell on the topic of finance reform (at HuffPo).

I’m of the view that Barney Frank is a nice guy — wayyyyyyyy too nice a guy! Well-intentioned, witty, and pleasant. But not tough enough for the level of rapacity he’s up against. Ditto the rest of his committee.

And the WH.

These folks are being way, wayyyyyy too nice.
They need to think about the banks as mobsters; then they might wake up and get serious about cleaning up this mess.

As it is, they’re all being far too accommodating and not nearly tough enough. Although I do believe they’re feeding their own egos by acting out some kind of limp-wristed political drama where they can emote about how they’re going to clean up the mess and ask ‘tough questions’.

Enough with the drama.
We need far better results than what we’re getting.

If the Senate doesn’t clean this up, I don’t see the WH or the House having the smarts or the guts or the ‘toughness’.

I’ll keep my expectations low – and maybe i will be pleasantly surprised that some level of Consumer Protection will actually happen.

But since the Banksters like Chase have steadily raised my credit card interest rate from 7% to now 14% since just Jan 2009 – I don’t have little faith that the mostly bought-and-paid-for Congress and White House will do much good for Consumers.

Sigh. I know I am pretty cynical right now and I wish it wasn’t so.

Well, you’ve got your supply siders with the gold (who make the rules) and then there’s the rest of us. I’ll call them “demand siders”. We’re the poor fools who have to use those financial instruments for our daily bread. It’s not just liquidity in the form of funds either. Energy is a form of liquidity too. Take this from the NY Times:

New School of Thought Brings Energy to ‘the Dismal Science’

The financial crisis and subsequent global recession have led to much soul-searching among economists, the vast majority of whom never saw it coming. But were their assumptions and models wrong only because of minor errors or because today’s dominant economic thinking violates the laws of physics?

Yeah, that’s right… Economics is all about energy…

“Neoclassical economics is inconsistent with the laws of thermodynamics.”

Central to their argument is an understanding that the survival of all living creatures is limited by the concept of energy return on investment (EROI): that any living thing or living societies can survive only so long as they are capable of getting more net energy from any activity than they expend during the performance of that activity.

So while the oil companies and their lapdogs, the automobile industry siphon away our livelyhoods we face utter peril…

“If you go from using a 20-to-1 energy return fuel down to a 3-to-1 fuel, economic collapse is guaranteed,” as nothing is left for other economic activity, said Nate Hagens, editor of the popular peak oil blog “The Oil Drum.”

Our last little meltdown can be seen as a foreshock of what can happen when energy costs escalate beyond control. Watch the so-called free market deal with burgeoning demand from other countries who may have the financial reserves to corner the world energy supply. Are we going to initiate anti-trust actions against our pacific rim neighbors? Imagine that!!

So back to the question — what about the future of consumers’ limits to participate in an economy with ultra-expensive energy costs?

“It isn’t that there’s no technology,” Hall said. “The question is, technology is in a race with depletion, and that’s a whole different concept. And we think that we can show empirically that depletion is winning, because the energy return on investment keeps dropping for gas and oil.”

There you have it — the marginal utility of petroleum is fast becoming zero due to the costs of access, production and distribution. We don’t need peak oil to know the score on energy sustainability. We’re there now, but folks aren’t hearing about it because the national debate is completely self-centered at the moment. The big picture is getting bigger — fast — like a runaway locomotive about to bust into the station. Will Fox news cover this? Maybe they’ll send Mr. Mustache to the next meeting of the “Drill baby drill” petroleum price protests in DC.

The most pessimistic of the biophysical economics camp sees the oil-fueled world economy grinding to a halt soon, possibly within 10 years. They are all working to get the message out, but not all of them believe their peers in other professions will listen.

I’m expecting energy prices to soar much sooner than that. If the resumption of growth here and around the world continues at the same pace then China will easily push oil prices back up to pre-collapse highs. At $80 a barrel it is already starting to pinch, but not enough to cause an alarm. Once the Hummer plant comes on line in the PRC though — watch out! The Chinese will need more than a few Nigerian oil fields to call their own. Does the middle east want new masters? The ability to pay a premium for regular may tip the strategic balance away from the West, ending the hubris of American Exceptionalism.

“Of course I’m trying to send a message,” said Joseph Tainter, chairman of Utah State University’s Department of Environment and Society. “I just don’t expect there’s anyone out there to receive it.”

Message received, loud and clear!

Very true, but it’s a positive to make sure he’s remembered as a guy whom everyone (including himself) thought was so right until the sh*t hit the fan. Take a look at this article in the timesonline. What I think is most interesting is how even reporters like this one can see the problem so clearly but so quickly dismiss the creation of an international regulatory framework:

The Davos consensus on what needs to be done was concerning. Asked what the top priority should be in terms of financial regulation for the forthcoming G20 meeting, half the delegates at the session said it was addressing the lack of an international regulatory framework.

The British reporter seems to have a similar flaw as the people over at the Economist when put their minds to the question of the European Union, i.e. it’s obviously a bad idea because it’ll be difficult to achieve:

Coming up with an international regulatory framework will be extremely difficult. Unlike in trade, for example, there is no treaty-based international organisation in which such a framework can be hammered out.

So the reporter isn’t too worried about it:

It will take a very long time. So long, in fact, that it is unlikely to be finished before the efficient market hypothesis rises again from the dead. As it surely will.

Thanks for the kudos, though I’m mostly happy that I didn’t go too far off course by writing a diary entry calling out Congresswoman Melissa Bean (D-Illinois) and her communications director, Jonathan Lipman.

In retrospect, I think the responses from Steve Adamske, Rep. Barney Frank’s communications director, were efforts to communicate at the end of the the week before HR 3621 passed out of committee that a deal was in the works.

I also got some great feedback, insights and information from Lauren Weiner, a spokesperson for Americans for Financial Reform, including a tip on an article in CongressDaily, which I reproduced in a diary entry.

Now that HR 3621 is out of the House Finance Committee, we’ll have to see what Congresswoman Bean, Blue Dogs, and/or Republicans try to do to it on the House floor.