LET'S STOP WALL STREET LOAN-SHARKING

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/news/record.cfm?id=310323

Date: 03/23/2009

By Senator Bernie Sanders

The “Masters of the Universe” on Wall Street – through their greed, recklessness and illegal behavior – have plunged this country into a deep recession causing millions of Americans to lose their jobs, their homes, their savings and their hope for the future. In order to fully understand the cause of this fiasco, I have introduced legislation calling for a thorough investigation of the financial meltdown and the prosecution of those CEOs who broke the law. The culture of greed, fraud and excessive speculation must come to an end.

In the midst of this financial disaster, one of the great frustrations that I hear from my constituents is that while taxpayers are spending hundreds of billions bailing out major financial institutions, and while these big banks are getting near-zero interest rate loans from the Fed, these very same financial institutions are now charging Americans 20 percent or 30 percent interest rates on their credit cards. In fact, one-third of all credit card holders in this country are now paying interest rates above 20 percent and as high as 41 percent – more than double what they paid in interest in 1990. Recently, some major institutions such as Bank of America have informed responsible cardholders that their interest rates would be doubled to as high as 28 percent, without explaining why the increase was taking place.

Let’s be clear. At a time when many Americans in the collapsing middle class use credit cards for groceries, gas and college expenses, what Wall Street and credit card companies are doing is not much different from what gangsters and loan sharks do when they make predatory loans. While the bankers wear three-piece suits and don’t break the knee caps of those who can’t pay back, they are still destroying people's lives.

The Bible has a term for this practice. It’s called usury. And in The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri’s epic poem, there was a special place reserved in the Seventh Circle of Hell for sinners who charged people usurious interest rates.

MORE at the link above --

[terisan]

1. Praise Bernie. nt

[notesdev]

2. just stop using the damn things

nobody is forcing anyone to use them - so don't use them, let those companies go out of business like they deserve to do.