The Cash Cows of Personal Debt: The Credit Card Industry and Predatory
Capitalism

By Charles Sullivan
Created Dec 14 2006 - 9:45am

The booming credit card business is one of the most profitable and
destructive industries to ever emerge from the inventive capitalist mind.
Citibank is raking in more money than Microsoft and Wal-Mart. Obscene
profits are realized without lifting a finger to perform any physical work.
In 2004 a single credit card company-the MBNA-realized 1.5 times the profits
of fast food industry giant McDonald's. Collecting on credit card debt is a
very lucrative business.

With origins in South Dakota, the modern credit card industry began
realizing obscene profits as a result of deregulation. The Supreme Court
also played a pivotal role in expanding banking industry profits by lifting
limits to the amount of additional fees credit card companies could charge
their customers. The sky is the limit now. Industry deregulation has
resulted in the systemic fleecing of consumers by practices that can only be
described as willful and predatory in nature.

It is variously estimated that debit cards will account for 26%% of retail
sales volumes between the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays this year, up
3%% from 2005. The busiest shopping period of the year does not occur on
Black Friday, as is widely reported, but between the 11th and 17th of
December. During this span Americans will likely spend $34 billion on credit
and debit card purchases; and nearly $86 billion between Thanksgiving and
Christmas. Billions more will be spent on store issued credit cards. In
total, Americans will accrue $135 billion in additional credit card debt
this holiday season.

To date, credit card volume is running 11%% percent higher than last year.
The National Retail Federation estimates that over $454 billion will be
spent by American consumers during the holiday season this year, including
cash purchases. That represents a 5%% increase over the previous year, while
VISA USA estimates overall retail sales for the 2006 holiday season to
increase by 7.5%%.These are truly staggering numbers that are not easily
grasped.

By paying only the monthly minimum payments, as so many struggling families
do, it may require more than thirty years to pay off a dress or a power tool
that was purchased at the local mall on Black Friday. That makes for a
pretty expensive gift and every year additional debt is accumulating upon
the old, making extrication very difficult, if not impossible. But that is
the whole idea behind predatory capitalism. Industry insiders refer to the
small percentage of card holders who do not carry a monthly balance as 'dead
beats.' Consumer traps are engineered into the system that all but
guarantees that card uses will be late making their payments or exceed their
credit limits.

When card users are late making payments, as the complex algorithms used by
card issuers predict they will, interest rates rise dramatically and
multiple user fees are added to the monthly bill. Millions of card users
spend most of their income paying exorbitant user fees, without reducing the
balance or reducing it only minimally. The bankers are raking in billions,
while working class families are becoming debt slaves to the predatory
capitalists of the credit card industry. This was made possible with the
blessings of Congress operating under the influence of the corporate
lobbyists that swarm on Capitol Hill like maggots on a corpse.

Bankruptcy laws that once provided working people a way out of debt are no
longer available to them as an avenue of escape. It should be noted,
however, that bankruptcy courts remain open to corporations and provide them
with debt relief, a chance to start over with a clean slate.

Thus the banker thieves will continue to rob working families until death do
them part; and then the debt burden is passed on to the next of kin. More
than a cash cow designed to bilk the people of their hard earned income,
credit card debt is also a way to control the debtors and keep them in line;
and it is a major battle front in the class war that rages across the
continent.

Like genetically modified poultry with abnormally large breasts, the
American consumer is bred to consume and to be consumed by predatory
capitalists. They are taken in by seductive advertising campaigns that
nourish the urge to consume, no matter how destructive to the self or to the
planet.

Credit card agreements are so complex and deliberately misleading that few
consumers, or even lawyers can fully comprehend them; and they are mined
with hidden traps and pitfalls guaranteed to produce lifetimes of debt.

From the previously cited statistics it should be clear that the people
stand naked and vulnerable before the predatory capitalists and their
cohorts in government. Massive personal debt is yet another example of a
profit driven system that does not work for the working people of this
nation. The trust that should prosper between people and government no
longer exists, leaving the majority of citizens without representation.
Predatory capitalism creates enormous wealth for a privileged few by
exploiting workers who are trying to survive by working multiple jobs that
yield non-living wages, and few or no benefits.

Virtually all of the financial institutions in this country, including the
Federal Reserve, are arrayed against working families. Congress is working
for big business rather than working families, as evidenced by their policy
decisions and voting records. Let us be clear about whose side they are on.

Ever more creative methods of fleecing the people are being crafted in the
corporate board rooms of America and dutifully written into law by Congress.
Millions of working people thus find themselves buried under an avalanche of
debt from which they will never escape. Debtors are a cash cow for the
credit card and banking industries whose supply of milk is without end.
Eventually we will be required to work until we die, as our creditors and
Congress work in concert to bleed us to death and gorge themselves on our
labor and our suffering.

The low esteem by which workers are held in America by the ruling Plutocracy
underscores the reality that there is no one looking out for our interests.
But we must remember that we comprise about 95%% of the population. Our low
placement on the economic rungs of the ladder assures that we will remain
bottom feeders, either surviving or perishing on the crumbs that fall from
the tables of the rich, thereby guaranteeing our continued serfdom to them.
It also demonstrates the necessity of organizing as a class and rising
together against the corporate predators that are bleeding us of life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Sources:

BCS Alliance

www.Cardweb.com [1]

PBS Frontline, November 28, 2006
_______
Charles Sullivan

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson