Credit and Bankruptcy "Reform"

Credit card companies and probably the second mortgage outfits are modern-day loan sharks. Not too many years ago people went to prison for loaning money like this to needy, vulnerable Americans and demanding the kind of interest rates and penalties these shysters do. It is usury, and it is gangsterism on a national scale.

Bankruptcy laws were not in need of change, at least not so as to benefit credit card companies, and what Congress is now calling bankruptcy "reforms" are not reforms at all. They are a pandering truckload of new restrictions on the people of this country that accomplish nothing more noble than to make it harder for the average Joe or Jane to get out of the clutches of a credit card company or its hired thugs, the collection agencies. The only "help" being offered here is a fat handout to the already bloated plastic peddlers. Meanwhile, the loan industry helps itself with a new national campaign to sucker American consumers into exchanging their unsecured debt (which can be forgiven in a bankruptcy) for secured debt -- in the especially sinister form of a second lien on their homes -- which a bankruptcy cannot forgive. Not even Suzy Orman approves of the tactic of trading your credit card debt to a loan company in exchange for an easy lien on your house, to use against you if you default.

The whole affair is a shameful pander to the lobby of the meanest financial gang out there, and Congress should be ashamed of itself -- because their betrayal WILL BE recognized, sooner or later, and they WILL BE held responsible by history for this massive fraud. History will reflect the ruin of these politicians' legacies and reputations, because of their collusion in this scheme to keep Americans indentured to an abusive system while putting more millions into the pockets of the already Jabba-like "credit" companies. It is usury. It is loan sharking. And now the government is poised to become part of the conspiracy.