“The House Financial Services Committee voted 48-19 to approve a bill to clamp down on rates and fees; nine Republicans joined the panel’s Democrats in voting for it.
“The House bill would, among other things, ban ‘arbitrary’ interest rate increases, prohibit excessive fees and order more disclosure.”
Good for you, right? Wrong!
Don’t complain that you didn’t see it coming when the government pilfers taxpayers on this one.
So let’s say Mastercard jacks up rates. The government will swoop down and prevent them from doing it, right? Wrong!
It is more likely that the government will sanctify these rates as “approved by regulators.” Once government has the right to define what constitutes an arbitrary rate increase or excessive fee, there is nothing to guarantee it will do so for the benefit of consumers. Of course that is how it will be sold to the public, as a huge power grab for the benefit of the people.
There will be the sacrificial lambs, the unconnected credit card issuers and firms that don’t have their hands in Washington’s pockets. The press will glorify the regulators and condemn the “capitalists” while paying no mind to the well-connected firms that own all the media outlets anyway and whose market shares increase as the government targets the competition.
And so it goes with bailout money and surplus funds. We are now hearing about the courageous investigators whose job it is to track the corrupt spending associated with being gifted billions of dollars by the government. Great! Was the money set aside to prosecute these claims included in the TARP money or whatever other bailout Congress approved? Who cares!? More jobs! Increased government spending!
I love how government spending enthusiasts think a job investigating corruption in government big-money schemes is one that, when created, adds to the productivity of society. What? You might as well pay people to dig holes in the ground. But I didn’t say that. Keynes did.
And let’s not forget that this legislation doesn’t touch any of the transactions that institutions have with the Federal Reserve. Since Auditing the Federal Reserve is illegal and not even possible under FOIA requests, we don’t know who is getting the $100B+ in money at the Fed’s discount window every week. Which also means we don’t know if any of that money is being used to, who knows, buy up constituents and bailout everyone but the little guy and the middle class.
And so continues the long road toward government control of absolutely everything. I can see Congressional eyes lighting up at the idea of new positions within the administration, more rungs added to D.C.’s social ladder. The climbers will climb! The Leviathan grows. More regulators! More investigators! More capitalist traitors! Off with their heads!
Go lick a boot. I don’t care what you do, personally. I’m paying off all my credit cards this week. I’m out of this game; I want no part of it. But you can be sure I’ll be watching and snickering as the “drama” unfolds once the media starts reporting about vicious credit card companies and their unsuspecting victims (who spent nearly 90,000k on their credit cards because of the 3.5% predatory interest rate and excessive $200 per year membership fee).
