I find this type of political maneuvering disturbing.
The sad truth about credit card debt and the credit card industry is that tens of millions of people are being oppressed by the credit card industry, but these tens of millions of american don't think they are being oppressed as long as they can make the monthly minimum payment. Ironically, it is the low monthly minimum payment that has indentured these same millions of americans without them realizing it.
The other sad truth is not every complaint about credit card debt is a valid one. A town hall meeting will simply meld together the less valid, lack of personal responsibility complaints with the gut wrenchingly sad, unfair, and anti american behaviors that ARE PERPETRATED against american citizens by the credit card industry.
The United States has a population of over 300 million and over 200 million adults. That means that even if 10 million americans have been absolutely treated unfairly and are indentured to credit card debt for the rest of their life, that still only works out to 5 percent of the adult population!
This also means that if the town hall meeting is a random sampling of the adult population, then only one in 20 at that meeting will have the hard hitting examples we need to hear about. Imagine going to a football game in which only 5% of those in attendance actually understand football, and the rest of the stadium is comprised of tennis, baseball, basketball, golf fans and so on.
I don't want the hard hitting core issues to be diluted by somebody complaining because their credit line they were not using was cut in half, or that they were preapproved for a card then denied. The reason I don't want to hear about those issues is they will DILUTE the MORE IMPORTANT ISSUES THAT ALREADY EXIST AND ARE MORE HEINOUS!
Extremely important credit card issues that already exist include, the theft of frequent flyer miles from AMEX customers, those miles were then "reallocated" by American Airlines to Citibank in exchange for lower interest rates on loans that American Airlines requires.
Extremely mportant credit card issues include CHANGING TERMS WITHOUT ALLOWING THE CUSTOMER THE RIGHT TO OPT OUT once the see the changes on their billing statement.
Extremely important credit card issues include not dropping a credit line to either below, at, or just above the amount of credit card debt a person already has. Lower the card limit if you must, but give the consumer a bit of a soft landing as well.
Extremely important credit card issues include changing the credit card industry from punitive based policies that are punishing people with stellar payment histories to incentive based policies that reward credit card users with excellent paying and responsibility records. Also, reward anybody who is intent on PAYING DOWN their debt.
Extremely important credit card issues include a higher monthly minimum payment requirement for college aged kids just starting out with credit cards. A TEN PERCENT MONTHLY MINIMUM PAYMENT REQUIREMENT FOR COLLEGE KIDS would reduce the amount of debt a college age person would acrue and limit the credit card companies losses as well.
Extremely important credit card issues include not labeling customers "toxic assets" because they have low interest credit card accounts that they EARNED by having an excellent payment history.
As you can see I've just outlined six really important credit card issues that could take an entire town hall meeting to discuss at length, especially if customer horror stories related to these six issues are discussed as well.
Instead, Barack Obama's town hall meeting will probably see such a bombardment of issues that there is a chance that the american citizen will be made out to be a whiner and complainer.
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