When will the government insist on credit card companies lowering thier interest?
The government won’t. Your credit score determines your rate. The people with iffy credit, pay big rates because they default too much and the rates are high to cover the losses. If you have good credit your rate will be lower. For example, I have 11.99% on my Mastercard card and I used my Visa to buy a car as they offered me an eight month promotional rate of 1.87%. And both of these places know they will get 100 cents on the dollar back. Thus, I get a lower rate. And the car will be paid off before the promotional rate ends.
So, you want the government to control private business, because you don’t want people to have to pay the rates, that’s interesting. If people would not charge more than they can pay for, the rates would not be an issue. I agree with the fellow who said excessive spending is the issue, not the rates. Too much gov’t control is a BAD idea. Sure, you’re fine with it when it’s regulating someone else (like the big, bad evil businesses that charge poor innocent shopaholics high rates on stuff they cannot afford to pay for) but your view would change if the gov’t decided to move on to regulating say, how much time you can watch tv, or how much money you can spend in a year, etc. It’s easy to say “regulate them!
No, they should not do this. Credit card rates are high because they are high risk, unsecured loans. If you don’t like the rates, don’t use the cards, or do as smart people do and pay the card off each month. Using a credit card at 19% as a line of credit is just stupid. If the government regulates the rates to ‘inline with bank rates’, the credit card companies will stop offering cards to most users, and the system will crash. High rates are not the problem, excessive spending is the problem.
