Congress is screwing with the market again:

Credit cards have long been a very good deal for people who pay their bills on time and in full. Even as card companies imposed punitive fees and penalties on those late with their payments, the best customers racked up cash-back rewards, frequent-flier miles and other perks in recent years.

Now Congress is moving to limit the penalties on riskier borrowers, who have become a prime source of billions of dollars in fee revenue for the industry. And to make up for lost income, the card companies are going after those people with sterling credit.

Banks are expected to look at reviving annual fees, curtailing cash-back and other rewards programs and charging interest immediately on a purchase instead of allowing a grace period of weeks, according to bank officials and trade groups.

Well goddammit. Thank you Congress, for once again helping deadbeats who don’t want to pay their bills at the expense of responsible consumers like me.

I have no sympathy for people in credit card debt. They knew what they were signing up for. Yours truly was once in a bit of credit card debt, but you know what I did? I stopped spending money and got another job. I paid off my debt within a few months, and I didn’t need Congress’s help to do it.

Now, as a person who pays his credit card bill in full every month, I will soon be penalized so that less responsible people can have lower penalties and interest rates, i.e. less incentive to act responsibly. Will someone please explain to me how this makes any sense at all?

If this goes as predicted, I and many others will likely close my credit card accounts, and the only people who will have credit cards will be those who can’t pay them back.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 12:45 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.