credit cards

Moments ago, Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic proposal to freeze credit card rates on existing balances through the holiday season. The bill, sponsored by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), would prevent credit card companies from hiking rates and fees on existing balances until the industry reforms passed by Congress earlier this year take [...]

The subprime crisis certainly highlighted the need for American consumers to become more financially literate. But who defines financial literacy? And what makes someone an expert? Mike Konczal at Rortybomb asks these and other questions regarding financial literacy education — a subject TWI has also been looking into lately.
Did you know that since 2003, when [...]

President Obama called on Wall Street today to stop fighting financial regulation and to instead embrace reform, Bloomberg reported. Speaking at Federal Hall in New York City on the first anniversary of the fall of Lehman Brothers, Obama used plain language to explain to all the financial wizards who brought us this crisis that they [...]

Even as some of Congress’ recently enacted credit card reforms go into effect today, a New York Times editorial reminds Washington that the banks are still cheating customers with overdraft fees charged to debit card users. These fees, which average $27 a pop, are slapped on consumers when purchases exceed account balances, regardless [...]

People who refuse to make good on their credit card payments or other debts actually have a name — “ruthless defaulters” — and their numbers are likely to grow as more consumers find themselves overwhelmed by bills, according to David Streitfeld’s piece in The New York Times Sunday, which getting a lot of attention in [...]

Congressional Democrats this week have been publicly incredulous that the credit card industry would have the temerity to raise rates and limit lending in the months before legislation restricting those practices takes hold. Indeed, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who in April asked the Federal Reserve to step in to prevent card issuers from raising rates [...]

If you’ve got a credit card, you can’t be blamed for thinking that the landmark legislation recently passed by Congress to curb abuses by card issuers would mean the end of things like arbitrary interest rate hikes. That was supposed to be the point, after all, of Congress’ belated efforts to put an end to [...]

After years of lively debate and partisan wrangling, sweeping new protections for credit card users are law. President Obama on Friday attached his signature to the Credit Card Holders Bill of Rights, which prohibits rate hikes on most existing balances and provides borrowers a wider window to pay their bills.
Most of the reforms will go [...]

The Obama administration is considering stripping the Securities and Exchange Commission of some its oversight powers, and shifting that responsibility to the Federal Reserve, Bloomberg reports.
The proposal, still being drafted, is likely to give the Federal Reserve more authority to supervise financial firms deemed too big to fail. The Fed may inherit some SEC functions, [...]

As Congress moves to reform punitive fees and penalties levied on cardholders who miss payments or exceed their credit limits, credit card issuers are threatening to charge new fees for customers who don’t carry balances each month and pay their bills on time, The New York Times reports.
Banks are expected to look at reviving annual [...]